Did 'Targets and Terror' Reduce Waiting Times in England for Hospital Care?

Carol Propper, Sutton Matt (), Whitnall Carolyn () and Frank Windmeijer
Additional contact information
Sutton Matt: University of Aberdeen
Whitnall Carolyn: University of Bristol

The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, 2008, vol. 8, issue 2, 27

Abstract: Waiting times have been a central concern in the English NHS, where care is provided free at the point of delivery and is rationed by waiting time. Pro-market reforms introduced in the NHS in the 1990s were not accompanied by large drops in waiting times. As a result, the English government in 2000 adopted the use of an aggressive policy of targets coupled with the publication of waiting times data at the hospital level and strong sanctions for poor performing hospital managers. This regime has been dubbed 'targets and terror'. We estimate the effect of the English target regime for waiting times for hospital care after 2001 by a comparative analysis with Scotland, a neighbouring country with the same healthcare system that did not adopt the target regime. We estimate difference-in-differences models of the proportion of people on the waiting list who waited over 6, 9 and 12 months. Comparisons between England and Scotland are sensitive to whether published or unpublished data are used but, regardless of the data source, the 'targets and terror' regime in England lowered the proportion of people waiting for elective treatment relative to Scotland.

Keywords: health care; waiting times; targets (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (40)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.2202/1935-1682.1863 (text/html)
For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.

Related works:
Working Paper: Did 'Targets and Terror' Reduce Waiting times in England for Hospital Care? (2007)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bpj:bejeap:v:8:y:2008:i:2:n:5

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.degruyter.com/journal/key/bejeap/html

DOI: 10.2202/1935-1682.1863

Access Statistics for this article

The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy is currently edited by Hendrik Jürges and Sandra Ludwig

More articles in The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().