Incentives in HMO's

Martin Gaynor, James Rebitzer and Lowell Taylor

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

Abstract: We study the effect of physician incentives in an HMO network. Physician incentives are controversial because they may induce doctors to make treatment decisions that differ from those they would chose in absence of incentives. We set out a theoretical framework for assessing the degree to which incentive contracts do in fact induce physicians to deviate from a standard guided only by patient interests and professional medical judgement. Our empirical evaluation of the model relies on details of the HMO's incentive contracts and access to the firm’s internal expenditure records. We estimate that the HMO's incentive contract provides a typical physician an increase, at the margin of $0.10 in income for each $1.00 reduction in medical utilisation expenditures. The average response is a 5% reduction in medical expenditures. We also find suggestive evidence that financial incentives linked to commonly used "quality" measure may stimulate an improvement in measured quality.

Keywords: analysis; of; health; care; markets (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 45 pages
Date: 2002-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea and nep-mfd
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Related works:
Working Paper: Incentives In HMOs (2001)
Working Paper: Incentives in HMOs (2001)
Working Paper: Incentives In HMOs (2001)
Working Paper: Incentives in HMOs
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bri:cmpowp:03/089

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