This paper analyses the potential costs and benefits from patient driven competition between GPs and specialists by comparing gate-keeping with direct access to specialist care. The two access rules are compared under fee-for-service and capitation, on their performance at minimizing both total...

In this paper, we examine provider and patient behaviour where effort is non-contractible and where competition between providers is modeled in an explicit way. More specifically, we construct a model where physicians repeatedly compete for patients and where patients' outside options are solved...

The questions addressed in this paper are related to access rules to primary care services and the potential for patient driven competition between GPs and specialists. Most of the literature on the performance of primary care has dealt with reforming payment schemes, little attention being paid...