The Effects of Budgets on Doctors Behaviour: Evidence from a Natural Experiment

Mark Dusheiko, Hugh Gravelle, Rowena Jacobs and Peter Smith ()

The Centre for Market and Public Organisation from The Centre for Market and Public Organisation, University of Bristol, UK

Abstract: In many health care systems primary care physicians act as ‘gatekeepers’ to secondary care. We investigates the impact of the UK fundholding scheme under which general practices could elect to hold a budget to meet the costs of elective surgery for their patients. We use a differences in differences methodology on a large four year panel of English general practices before and after the abolition of fundholding. Fundholding incentives reduced fundholder elective admission rates by 3.3% and accounted for 57% of the difference between fundholder and nonfundholder elective admissions, with 43% a selection effect due to unobservable differences in practice characteristics. Fundholding had no effect on emergency admissions.

Keywords: budgets; health care; fundholding; admission rates (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I11 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 51 pages
Date: 2003-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-hea and nep-mfd
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

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Working Paper: The Effect of Budgets on Doctor Behaviour: Evidence From A Natural Experiment
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bri:cmpowp:03/064

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