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.
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Paper provided by Department of Economics, University of York in its series Discussion Papers with number
03/04.
Length: Date of creation: Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:yor:yorken:03/04
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Find related papers by JEL classification: I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health I11 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Analysis of Health Care Markets
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