IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cor/louvco/2003089.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The "gatekeeping" role of general practitioners. Does patients' information matter ?

Author

Listed:
  • GONZALEZ, Paula

Abstract

We deal with a principal-agent model in which the health authority acts as a principal for both a patient and a General Practitioner (GP). In this framework, we study the role of GPs as filters for secondary care, emphasizing the implications that patients' information may have for health authorities. We derive the GP's payment contract that induces him to perform diagnosis and follow its recommendation, as well as the level of copayments that provide patients with incentives to select the appropriate medical provider. We show that when patients can freely choose their provider, the quality of their information has contradictory effects. The higher this quality is, the lower the expected losses the patient bears. A higher quality, however, worsens the GP's agency problem, as GPs have more incentives to use patients' information as a substitute for their own diagnosis. We also analyze the role of patients' pressure for referral on the choice of the optimal system to access secondary care.

Suggested Citation

  • GONZALEZ, Paula, 2003. "The "gatekeeping" role of general practitioners. Does patients' information matter ?," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2003089, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
  • Handle: RePEc:cor:louvco:2003089
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://sites.uclouvain.be/core/publications/coredp/coredp2003.html
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Brekke, Kurt R. & Nuscheler, Robert & Straume, Odd Rune, 2007. "Gatekeeping in health care," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 149-170, January.
    2. Erik Schokkaert & Carine Van de Voorde, 2005. "Health care reform in Belgium," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 14(S1), pages 25-39, September.
    3. Martin, D.P. & Diehr, P. & Price, K.F. & Richardson, W.C., 1989. "Effect of a gatekeeper plan on health services use and charges: A randomized trial," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 79(12), pages 1628-1632.
    4. Iversen, Tor & Luras, Hilde, 2000. "Economic motives and professional norms: the case of general medical practice," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 43(4), pages 447-470, December.
    5. Marinoso, Begona Garcia & Jelovac, Izabela, 2003. "GPs' payment contracts and their referral practice," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(4), pages 617-635, July.
    6. Scott, Anthony, 2000. "Economics of general practice," Handbook of Health Economics, in: A. J. Culyer & J. P. Newhouse (ed.), Handbook of Health Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 22, pages 1175-1200, Elsevier.
    7. James M. Malcomson, 2004. "Health Service Gatekeepers," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 35(2), pages 401-421, Summer.
    8. Paula González, 2004. "Should physicians' dual practice be limited? An incentive approach," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 13(6), pages 505-524, June.
    9. Croxson, B. & Propper, C. & Perkins, A., 2001. "Do doctors respond to financial incentives? UK family doctors and the GP fundholder scheme," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(2), pages 375-398, February.
    10. Izabela Jelovac, 2001. "Physicians' payment contracts, treatment decisions and diagnosis accuracy," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 10(1), pages 9-25, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Brekke, Kurt R. & Nuscheler, Robert & Straume, Odd Rune, 2007. "Gatekeeping in health care," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 149-170, January.
    2. Tor Iversen & Ching-to Ma, 2011. "Market conditions and general practitioners’ referrals," International Journal of Health Economics and Management, Springer, vol. 11(4), pages 245-265, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Paula González, 2010. "Gatekeeping versus direct‐access when patient information matters," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 19(6), pages 730-754, June.
    2. Shinya Sugawara & Jiro Nakamura, 2014. "Incentive for Gatekeepers and Their Demand Inducement: An Empirical Analysis of Care Managers in the Japanese Long-Term Care Insurance," CIRJE F-Series CIRJE-F-916, CIRJE, Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo.
    3. Tor Iversen & Ching-to Ma, 2011. "Market conditions and general practitioners’ referrals," International Journal of Health Economics and Management, Springer, vol. 11(4), pages 245-265, December.
    4. Barigozzi, Francesca & Levaggi, Rosella, 2008. "Emotions in physician agency," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 88(1), pages 1-14, October.
    5. F. Barigozzi & R. Levaggi, 2005. "New Developments in Physician Agency: the Role of Patient Information," Working Papers 550, Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna.
    6. Godager, Geir & Iversen, Tor & Ma, Ching-to Albert, 2015. "Competition, gatekeeping, and health care access," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 159-170.
    7. Marie Allard & Izabela Jelovac & Pierre-Thomas Léger, 2014. "Payment mechanism and GP self-selection: capitation versus fee for service," International Journal of Health Economics and Management, Springer, vol. 14(2), pages 143-160, June.
    8. Marie Allard & Izabela Jelovac & Pierre-Thomas Léger, 2010. "Physicians self selection of a payment mechanism: Capitation versus fee-for-service," Post-Print halshs-00523370, HAL.
    9. Allard, Marie & Jelovac, Izabela & Léger, Pierre Thomas, 2011. "Treatment and referral decisions under different physician payment mechanisms," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(5), pages 880-893.
    10. Damien S Eldridge, 2007. "A Shirking Theory of Referrals," Working Papers 2007.05, School of Economics, La Trobe University.
    11. Brekke, Kurt R. & Nuscheler, Robert & Straume, Odd Rune, 2007. "Gatekeeping in health care," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 149-170, January.
    12. Schuster, Stephan, 2012. "Applications in Agent-Based Computational Economics," MPRA Paper 47201, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Tor Iversen & Anastasia Mokienko, 2016. "Supplementing gatekeeping with a revenue scheme for secondary care providers," International Journal of Health Economics and Management, Springer, vol. 16(3), pages 247-267, September.
    14. Sarah M. Hofmann & Andrea M. Muehlenweg, 2016. "Gatekeeping in German Primary Health Care - Impacts on Coordination of Care, Quality Indicators and Ambulatory Costs," CINCH Working Paper Series 1605, Universitaet Duisburg-Essen, Competent in Competition and Health, revised Sep 2016.
    15. Waibel, Christian & Wiesen, Daniel, 2016. "Kickbacks, referrals and efficiency in health care markets: Experimental evidence," HERO Online Working Paper Series 2016:8, University of Oslo, Health Economics Research Programme.
    16. Yiwei Chen & Hui Ding & Min Yu & Jieming Zhong & Ruying Hu & Xiangyu Chen & Chunmei Wang & Kaixu Xie & Karen Eggleston, 2019. "The Effects of Primary Care Chronic-Disease Management in Rural China," NBER Working Papers 26100, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Sisira Sarma & Nirav Mehta & Rose Anne Devlin & Koffi Ahoto Kpelitse & Lihua Li, 2018. "Family physician remuneration schemes and specialist referrals: Quasi‐experimental evidence from Ontario, Canada," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(10), pages 1533-1549, October.
    18. Felder, Stefan & Amann, Erwin, 2017. "No Crowding Out despite Kickbacks: Competition between Gatekeeping GPs," VfS Annual Conference 2017 (Vienna): Alternative Structures for Money and Banking 168116, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    19. K. R. Olsen, 2012. "Patient complexity and GPS' income under mixed remuneration," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(6), pages 619-632, June.
    20. Iversen, Tor, 2004. "The effects of a patient shortage on general practitioners' future income and list of patients," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(4), pages 673-694, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    general practice; incentives; patients’ beliefs; patients’ pressure; referrals;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • H51 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Health
    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
    • L51 - Industrial Organization - - Regulation and Industrial Policy - - - Economics of Regulation

    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:cor:louvco:2003089. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Alain GILLIS (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/coreebe.html .

    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.