Digital Workshop: Health economic research on GPs

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In countries with a National Health Service (NHS), such as the Nordic countries, General Practitioners (GPs) have a key role in allocating health care to patients. GPs are often given a dual role: On the one hand, they are agents for the patients and supposed to select the medical treatment that yields the higher benefit to the patients. On the other hand, GPs are required to balance the patients’ benefit against the cost of the medical treatment. However, a key challenge is that the GPs may lack sufficient information on the cost-benefit ratio when allocating health care to patients. In addition, financial incentives, resource constraints and, possibly, competition are likely to influence the GPs’ allocation of health care to patients.

In this digital workshop, papers that address these issues from a health economics perspective will be presented. We will learn about

• how choice opportunities for patients cause quality incentives for providers, even in markets where the demand side has poor quality information
• how renumeration schemes impact on GPs’ list size and service provision
• how physicians’ working conditions affect their prescription behavior
• how economic theory can guide governments to improve on GP recruitment challenges, and
• how P4P affects allocation of care across patients with low and high responsiveness to treatment

Program