User Fees in General Practice: Willingness to Pay and Potential Substitution Patterns—Results from a Danish GP Patient Survey

Christian Kronborg (), Line Bjørnskov Pedersen, Anders Fournaise and Christel Nøhr Kronborg
Additional contact information
Christian Kronborg: University of Southern Denmark, Centre of Health Economics Research (COHERE)
Line Bjørnskov Pedersen: University of Southern Denmark, Centre of Health Economics Research (COHERE)
Anders Fournaise: Region of Southern Denmark
Christel Nøhr Kronborg: Lægerne Nyenstad

Applied Health Economics and Health Policy, 2017, vol. 15, issue 5, No 7, 615-624

Abstract: Abstract Background Increases in public expenditures to general practitioner (GP) services and specialist care have spurred debate over whether to implement user fees for healthcare services such as GP consultations in Denmark. Objective The objective of this study was to examine Danish patients’ attitudes towards user fees and their willingness to pay (WTP) for a consultation, and to investigate how user charges may impact patients’ behaviour. Methods A questionnaire survey was conducted in a GP clinic. Results A total of 343 individual persons answered the questionnaire. One hundred and seventy (50%) persons were not willing to pay for a consultation. Among patients reporting positive WTP values, the mean WTP was 137 (standard deviation 140) Danish kroner (DKK). Patients who were 65 years old or older were more likely to be willing to pay for a GP consultation than patients under the age of 65 years. Furthermore, patients with a personal annual income of more than 200,000 DKK were more likely to be willing to pay for a consultation than other income groups. With respect to patients with a positive WTP value, their own assessment of the seriousness of the consultation and their self-assessed health influenced the amount they would be willing to pay. Finally, we observed a stated willingness to substitute GP consultations with alternatives that are free of charge. Conclusion About half of the patients with an appointment for a GP consultation are willing to pay for the consultation. User charges may potentially influence the patients’ behaviour. ClinicalTrials.gov NCT01784731.

Keywords: Moral Hazard; User Charge; Payment Card; Hypothetical Bias; General Practitioner Visit (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s40258-017-0325-y Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:aphecp:v:15:y:2017:i:5:d:10.1007_s40258-017-0325-y

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/40258

DOI: 10.1007/s40258-017-0325-y

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Health Economics and Health Policy is currently edited by Timothy Wrightson

More articles in Applied Health Economics and Health Policy from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().