The Gatekeeping Role of General Practitioners. Does Patients' Information Matter?

Paula González

No 06.09, Working Papers from Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Department of Economics

Abstract: We develop a principal-agent model in which the health authority acts as a principal for both a patient and a general practitioner (GP). The goal of the paper is to investigate the relative merits of gatekeeping and non-gatekeeping systems and to analyze the role of the quality of patient information and referral pressure in determining which model dominates. We find that, whenever GPs incentives matter, non-gatekeeping is better only if there is a sufficiently high pressure for referral. At the same time, for a non-gatekeeping system to dominate, the quality of the patient information should not be extreme: neither too bad (patient’ s self-referral would be very inefficient) nor too good (the GP’s agency problem would be very costly).

Keywords: General Practice; Moral hazard; Incentives; Patients’ beliefs; Patients’ pressure; Referrals. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D82 H51 I18 L51 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31 pages
Date: 2006-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea and nep-pbe
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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http://www.upo.es/serv/bib/wps/econ0609.pdf First version, 2006 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The "gatekeeping" role of general practitioners. Does patients' information matter ? (2003)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pab:wpaper:06.09

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