IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cpp/issued/v46y2020i2p253-263.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

After-Hours Incentives and Emergency Department Visits: Evidence from Ontario

Author

Listed:
  • Rose Anne Devlin
  • Koffi Ahoto Kpelitse
  • Lihua Li
  • Nirav Mehta
  • Sisira Sarma

Abstract

One important component of primary care reform in Ontario is to incentivize physicians to work after hours to improve access to core primary care services and potentially reduce visits to hospital emergency departments (EDs). Empirically, evidence on this link is ambiguous. We suggest reasons for this ambiguity and then harness rich administrative data from Ontario to carefully investigate whether and why after-hours incentives affect ED usage. The data cover physicians' office visits and ED visits from 2003 to 2007, a period with exogenous changes in after-hours incentives. We find strong evidence that less urgent ED visits are reduced as a result of these incentives.

Suggested Citation

  • Rose Anne Devlin & Koffi Ahoto Kpelitse & Lihua Li & Nirav Mehta & Sisira Sarma, 2020. "After-Hours Incentives and Emergency Department Visits: Evidence from Ontario," Canadian Public Policy, University of Toronto Press, vol. 46(2), pages 253-263, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpp:issued:v:46:y:2020:i:2:p:253-263
    DOI: 10.3138/cpp.2019-046
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/cpp.2019-046
    Download Restriction: access restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.3138/cpp.2019-046?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Nibene H. Somé & Rose Anne Devlin & Nirav Mehta & Gregory S. Zaric & Sisira Sarma, 2020. "Stirring the pot: Switching from blended fee‐for‐service to blended capitation models of physician remuneration," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(11), pages 1435-1455, November.
    2. Hong, Michael & Thind, Amardeep & Zaric, Gregory S. & Sarma, Sisira, 2020. "The impact of improved access to after-hours primary care on emergency department and primary care utilization: A systematic review," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 124(8), pages 812-818.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cpp:issued:v:46:y:2020:i:2:p:253-263. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Iver Chong (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.utpjournals.press/loi/cpp .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.