El análisis empírico del presente trabajo trata de evaluar los resultados asociables al gasto sanitario español y como consecuencia calibrar las distintas orientaciones para el crecimiento futuro del gasto sanitario público. A la vista del estudio de los potenciales impactos procedente de...

In this paper we describe the existence of financial illusion in public accounting and we comment on its effects for the future sustainability of local public services. We relate these features to the lack of incentives amongst public managers for improving the financial reporting and thus...

A number of health economics works require patient cost estimates as a basic information input. However the accuracy of cost estimates remains in general unspecified. We propose to investigate how the allocation of indirect costs or overheads can affect the estimation of patient costs in order...

This paper offers a general view of changes in health care management in the Spanish Health System. We focus on the organisational, financing and accountability aspects of health care provision. We do this by encompassing managerial changes and social change and well-grounded in theory health...

The principal aim of this paper is to estimate a stochastic frontier cost function and an inefficiency effects model in the analysis of the primary health care services purchased by the public authority and supplied by 180 providers in 1996 in Catalonia. The evidence from our sample does not...

Background Despite the intrinsic value of scientific disciplines, such as Economics, it is appropriate to gauge the impact of its applications on social welfare, or at least –Health Economics’ (HE) case- its influence on health policy and management. Methods The three relevant features of...

The organisation of inpatient care provision has undergone significant reform in many southern European countries. Overall across Europe, public management is moving towards the introduction of more flexibility and autonomy . In this setting, the promotion of the further decentralisation of...

The objective of this study was to evaluate the intended and unintended impact on pharmaceutical use and sales of three public financing reforms applied to the prescription of statins: a Spanish generic reference pricing (RP) system for lovastatin and simvastatin, and two competing policies...

We apply a multilevel hierarchical model to explore whether an aggregation fallacy exists in estimating the income elasticity of health expenditure by ignoring the regional composition of national health expenditure figures. We use data for 110 regions in eight OECD countries in 1997: Australia,...

In this article we examine the potential effect of market structure on hospital technical efficiency as a measure of performance controlled by ownership and regulation. This study is relevant to provide an evaluation of the potential effects of recommended and initiated deregulation policies in...