Understanding socioeconomic inequalities in health care is critical for achieving health equity. The aim of this paper is threefold: 1) to quantify inequality in diabetes health care service utilization; 2) to understand determinants of these inequalities in relation to socio-demographic and...

Background: This paper analyses the volume-outcome relationship and the effects of minimum volume regulations in the German hospital sector. Methods: We use a full sample of administrative data from the unselected, complete German hospital population for the years 2005 to 2007. We apply...

Background: Assessing the impact of cost sharing on healthcare utilization is a critical issue in health economics and health policy. It may affect the utilization of different services, but is yet to be well understood. Objective: This paper investigates the effects of reducing cost sharing for...

Cesarean deliveries are widely used in many high- and middle-income countries. This overuse both increases costs and lowers quality of care and is thus a major concern in the healthcare industry. The study first examines the impact of prenatal care utilization on cesarean delivery rates. It then...

In the last decades, demographic change coupled with new and expensive medical innovations have put most health care systems in developed countries under financial pressure. Therefore, ensuring efficient service provision is essential for a sustainable health care system. This paper investigates...

The threshold approach to medical decision-making, in which treatment decisions are made based on whether the probability of sickness exceeds a predetermined threshold, was introduced by (Pauker and Kassirer, N Engl J Med 293:229-234, 1975) and (Pauker and Kassirer, N Engl J Med 302:1109-1116,...