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Agency in health-care: are medical care-givers perfect agents?

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  • Einat Neuman
  • Shoshana Neuman

Abstract

It has been suggested in the literature that a source of incompleteness in the agency relationship between the doctor and the patient is that the provider may respond to an incomplete or biased perception of the patient's interests. However, this has not been shown empirically. This article is novel in presenting an empirical test of the fundamental assumption of the agency model that health-care professionals understand what their patients want. Discrete choice experiments (DCEs) are conducted simultaneously within samples of patients (women who gave birth) and care-givers (doctors and nurses), to elicit and contrast patients' authentic preferences (for five maternity ward attributes) with what care-givers believe them to be. Conclusion: agents have a biased perception of principals' preferences, and therefore a complete agency relationship does not exist. Our findings add a novel empirical contribution to the agency relationship literature. Moreover, parallel preference patterns of patients and care-givers are certainly of much interest to the field of health economics: Informing the unaware medical care-givers about the patients' preferences, will improve treatment and patients' satisfaction.

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  • Einat Neuman & Shoshana Neuman, 2009. "Agency in health-care: are medical care-givers perfect agents?," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(13), pages 1355-1360.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:apeclt:v:16:y:2009:i:13:p:1355-1360
    DOI: 10.1080/13504850701367379
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Vick, Sandra & Scott, Anthony, 1998. "Agency in health care. Examining patients' preferences for attributes of the doctor-patient relationship," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(5), pages 587-605, October.
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    Cited by:

    1. Riise, Julie & Hole, Arne Risa & Gyrd-Hansen, Dorte & Skåtun, Diane, 2016. "GPs' implicit prioritization through clinical choices – evidence from three national health services," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 169-183.
    2. Pedersen, Line Bjørnskov & Hess, Stephane & Kjær, Trine, 2016. "Asymmetric information and user orientation in general practice: Exploring the agency relationship in a best–worst scaling study," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 115-130.
    3. Alessandro Mengoni & Chiara Seghieri & Sabina Nuti, 2013. "The application of discrete choice experiments in health economics: a systematic review of the literature," Working Papers 201301, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna of Pisa, Istituto di Management.
    4. Neuman, Tzahi & Neuman, Einat & Neuman, Shoshana, 2010. "Explorations of the effect of experience on preferences for a health-care service," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 39(3), pages 407-419, June.

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