Patient Choice, Entry, and the Quality of Primary Care: Evidence from Swedish Reforms

Jens Dietrichson, Lina Maria Ellegård and Gustav Kjellsson

No 2016:36, Working Papers from Lund University, Department of Economics

Abstract: Policies aimed to spur quality competition among health care providers are ubiquitous, but their impact on quality is ex ante ambiguous. This study contributes to the sparse empirical literature on primary care quality by examining the heterogeneous impact of recent competition enhancing reforms in Sweden. The reforms led to substantially more entry of new providers in more exposed markets, but the effects on primary care quality in these markets were modest: we find small improvements of patients’ overall satisfaction with care, but no consistently significant effects on avoidable hospitalization rates or satisfaction with access to care.

Keywords: Competition; Patient choice; Primary health care; Quality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D04 H75 I11 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 73 pages
Date: 2016-12-14, Revised 2018-06-27
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com, nep-hea, nep-pbe and nep-pub
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Journal Article: Patient choice, entry, and the quality of primary care: Evidence from Swedish reforms (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:lunewp:2016_036

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