Managing Excess Demand for Primary Care: Evidence from Online Experiments

Primary healthcare systems in many developed countries are under strain, partly due to unrestricted patient demand. In response, policymakers have introduced measures to curb unnecessary GP visits, including (i) instituting a small upfront fee for GP visits, (ii) implementing a self-report based triage system, and (iii) providing more information to patients about their condition before they make an appointment with their GP. We evaluate the effectiveness of these approaches using two online experiments with a representative sample of UK adults. The first experiment involves induced monetary incentives in a laboratory-style study while the second is a health-framed vignette study. We find that while all three interventions are effective in the laboratory study, only the intervention that provides patients with more information about their condition reduces low-priority demand in the vignette study. We discuss implications for policy and for the study of health-related decision-making.