Besley, Hall, and Preston (1999) estimated a model of the demand for private health insurance in Britain as a function of regional waiting lists and found that increases in the number of people waiting for more than 12 months (the long-term waiting list) increased the probability of insurance...

Many countries, including Australia, regulate the price consumers pay for pharmaceuticals. In this paper, the Australian Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) is modelled as a multi-stage game played between the regulator and pharmaceutical firms. Conditions are derived under which vertically...

The development of new genetic technology brings with it responsibility for evaluating the effectiveness and efficiency of testing programs, including gaining an understanding of the value of information. This study examined the factors individuals took into account when making decisions about...

The research evidence on the relationships between patient throughput and costs and outcomes indicate that, for cardiac and vascular surgery, outcomes are better in units with high rates of patient activity. However, the gains to increasing throughput are most substantial at rates of activity...

The use of Stated Preference Discrete Choice Modelling (SPDCM) is gaining currency in the health economics field as a method of eliciting: preferences for goods and services; the rate at which individuals are prepared to trade off different attributes of a good or service; and the willingness to...

Objectives: The Medicare Safety Net Policy was introduced in March 2004 to provide financial relief for those Australians who face high out-of-pocket (OOP) costs for outpatient medical services. This study evaluates the extent to which out-of-pocket costs have fallen since the introduction of...

Limits on health care resources mean that resource allocation decisions should be guided by considerations of costs in relation to benefits. A method of economic evaluation, (cost utility analysis) was used to evaluate the costs and benefits of a physiotherapy outpatients department. The quality...

An evaluation of the Fractured Hip Management Program was conducted, in order to assess its cost effectiveness relative to treatment of these patients without the program. A before-and-after study design was used to identify the impact of the program on the length of hospital stay and outcome,...

Structural and micro-economic reforms have been recommended for hospitals as part of an overall scheme of health care reform. One of the recommended reforms, clinical budgeting, is a health services adaptation of transfer pricing, which is used routinely in commercial enterprises. It involves...

Nursing shortages are commonly observed features of hospital systems in Australia, Europe and the United States. To date there has been very little research on the effects of hospital characteristics on the retention of the nursing staff. In this paper we match individual data on registered...