Physician density in a two-tiered health care system

Martin Gächter, Peter Schwazer, Engelbert Theurl and Hannes Winner

Health Policy, 2012, vol. 106, issue 3, 257-268

Abstract: We investigate the density of non-contract (private) physicians in a two-tiered health care system, i.e., one with co-existing public and private health care providers. In particular, we analyze how the densities of private and public suppliers of outpatient health care (general practitioners and specialists) are related to each other. Using a panel of 121 Austrian districts between 2002 and 2008, we apply a Hausman–Taylor estimator, which allows to treat each of these densities as endogenous. We find that the density of non-contract specialists is positively associated with the density of non-contract general practitioners, but not significantly related to the density of contract general practitioners. We also observe a negative relationship between the densities of non-contract and contract general practitioners and the ones of non-contract and contract specialists, indicating competitive forces between the private and the public sector of the outpatient health care provision in Austria. Our results contribute to the ongoing debate on the role of non-contract physicians for health care provision in Austria.

Keywords: Competition in health care markets; Physician location; Panel econometrics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C23 I11 I18 L23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168851012001170
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Physician Density in a Two-Tiered Health Care System (2011)
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:eee:hepoli:v:106:y:2012:i:3:p:257-268

DOI: 10.1016/j.healthpol.2012.04.012

Access Statistics for this article

Health Policy is currently edited by Katrien Kesteloot, Mia Defever and Irina Cleemput

More articles in Health Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu () and ().