In this paper I model the demand for and supply of elective surgery using a modified Hotelling framework in which waiting time, money and distance costs are determinants of the demand for hospital care. Hospitals compete with each other by varying supply and hence their waiting times. I consider both the situation where GPs do not hold a budget (and thus Health Authorities pay for health care), and the situation where they are given budgets to buy care for their patients. Waiting time increases when production of care becomes more expensive, when the benefit obtained from treatment increases, when the unit cost of distance decreases, and when the importance given to the delay by the hospitals decreases. Moreover, the higher the money price (and if greater than the marginal cost of producing hospital care) the lower the waiting time. If the money price paid by GP fundholders is higher than that paid by HAs, fundholding patients pay a lower time price.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Department of Economics, University of York in its series Discussion Papers with number
99/38.
Length: Date of creation: Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:yor:yorken:99/38
Contact details of provider: Postal: Department of Economics and Related Studies, University of York, York, YO10 5DD, United Kingdom Phone: (0)1904 433776 Fax: (0)1904 433759 Email: Web page: http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/econ/ More information through EDIRC
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Michael Shallcross).
Related research
Keywords:
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: