Dramatic increases in health expenditures have led to a substantial number of regulatory interventions in the markets for devices over the last years. However, little attention has been paid thus far to the regulation of medical devices and its effects. This article explores the policies pursued...

The German hospital market has been subject over the past two decades to a variety of healthcare reforms. Particularly the introduction of diagnosis-related groups (DRGs) in 2004 aimed to increase efficiency of hospitals. The objective of the paper is to review recent studies comparing the...

Small area variations in healthcare infrastructure may result in differences in early detection and outcomes for patients with rare diseases.

There is a growing interest in the cross-country comparisons of the performance of national health care systems. The present work provides a comparison of the technical efficiency of the hospital sector using unbalanced panel data from OECD countries over the period 2000–2009. The estimation...

Objective To examine the price reactions of German pharmacies to changes made to OTC drug regulations in 2004. Prior to these changes, regulations guaranteed identical prices in all German pharmacies.Methods Two years after market deregulation, 256 pharmacies were surveyed to determine the...