EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Risk and the general practitioner budget holder

Stephen Martin, Nigel Rice and Peter C. Smith

Social Science & Medicine, 1998, vol. 47, issue 10, 1547-1554

Abstract: For most individuals, the use made of health care in a given year is determined principally by unpredictable random incidents. Of course, some individuals have a predictably higher predisposition to illness than others. However, the general consensus is that only a fraction of individual variability in health care costs can be predicted. The purpose of this paper is to explore the implications of this inherent randomness for setting health care budgets for general practitioner purchasers of health care. The paper argues that variability in utilization in health care is very high; that no capitation formula can ever completely capture that variability, even for large populations; that the variability may give rise to certain dysfunctional consequences if not managed carefully; and that therefore careful attention should be given to the managerial arrangements associated with any devolution of health care budgets.

Date: 1998
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(98)00231-7
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
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:socmed:v:47:y:1998:i:10:p:1547-1554

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
http://www.elsevier. ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian

More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-23
Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:47:y:1998:i:10:p:1547-1554