IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/indorg/v89y2023ics0167718723000371.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Telemedicine competition, pricing, and technology adoption: Evidence from talk therapists

Author

Listed:
  • Goetz, Daniel

Abstract

This paper examines how new telemedicine competitors affected incumbent health care providers during the first waves of COVID-19. Using data from the largest mental health provider search platform in Canada, I show that increased telemedicine competition in a market caused incumbent providers in that market to stop offering income-based discounts to patients. I isolate the causal effect of competition in a difference-in-differences framework, comparing providers before and after a supply shock on the platform that exogenously assigned some markets new telemedicine search results. I find that higher-quality providers are more likely to stop income-based discounts when facing new telemedicine entrants, while lower-quality providers are more likely to exit the platform, which is consistent with telemedicine providers competing for more price-sensitive patients. The results suggest that expanding telemedicine options had a heterogeneous effect on the affordability of care.

Suggested Citation

  • Goetz, Daniel, 2023. "Telemedicine competition, pricing, and technology adoption: Evidence from talk therapists," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:indorg:v:89:y:2023:i:c:s0167718723000371
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ijindorg.2023.102956
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167718723000371
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.ijindorg.2023.102956?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.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Digitization; Telemedicine; Competition; Price discrimination; Mental health; COVID-19;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I11 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Analysis of Health Care Markets
    • L11 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Production, Pricing, and Market Structure; Size Distribution of Firms
    • O33 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:eee:indorg:v:89:y:2023:i:c:s0167718723000371. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505551 .

    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.