Excessive waiting times for elective surgery have been a long-standing concern in many national healthcare systems in the OECD. How do the hospital admission patterns that generate waiting lists affect different patients? What are the hospitals characteristics that determine waiting times? By...

Background: The regional availability of specialized physicians is an important aspect in healthcare of patients with IBD. The association between physician density and healthcare is not yet clear. Most studies did not consider district type, which reflects population density. Our research...

Since 2000 several papers have examined the efficiency of healthcare delivery systems worldwide. These papers have extended the literature using drastically different input and output combinations from one another, with little theoretical or empirical support backing these specifications. Issues...

Objective By manipulating patients' critical attitude in a video experiment, we examined whether physicians are more intended to perform defensive acts because of a higher perceived liability risk in Belgium. Methods We assigned 85 practicing gynaecologists/obstetricians and orthopaedists...

Background: Physician-induced demand (PID) is an important theory to test given the longstanding controversy surrounding it. Empirical health economists have been challenged to find natural experiments to test the theory because PID is tantamount to strong income effects. The data requirements...

The correct definition of the product market and of the geographic market is a prerequisite for assessing market structures in antitrust cases. For hospital markets, both dimensions are controversially discussed in the literature. Using data for the German hospital market we aim at elaborating...

The perception of the health sector from an economic policy point of view is changing. In the past, health expenditure was mostly seen as a "cost" item, probably because many medical treatments are covered by public health insurance. However, policymakers are increasingly realizing that a...

This paper examines the extent to which agglomeration of the hospital service industry enhances the productivity of producing health care. Specifically, we use a large set of private insurance claims from the FAIR Health database to show that an increasing spatial concentration of hospital...

Background: In recent years, measuring and evaluating the efficiency of health systems has been explored in the context of seeking resources to ensure the sustainability of 'countries' health and social systems and addressing various crises in the health sector. The study aims to quantify and...

Background: The cost of rural health continues to be high in the United States despite an overall improvement in national health insurance enrolment. Stakeholder’s perception of adverse selection remains a paramount culprit in the challenges of rural insurance markets. Risk attitude has been...