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...

The purpose of this paper is to obtain empirical measures of performance in the management of critical patients treated in intensive care units (ICUs) and to evaluate the factors associated with performance, in a two stage approach. In the first stage, this paper uses an extended version of Data...

Objective: To describe empirical studies evaluating the impact of reference pricing (RP) interventions in pharmaceutical markets in order to discuss the requirements for these evaluations. Methods: Ten studies were included in this review. For each study, the nature of the intervention, the...

Policies consisting of or including prior authorisation (PA) of pharmaceutical prescriptions have been increasingly implemented by public and private insurers in the last decade, especially in the US, in order to control drug spending. We conducted a systematic review of published articles...

We investigate the main sources of heterogeneity in regional efficiency. We estimate a translog stochastic-frontier production function in the analysis of Spanish regions in the period 1964 – 96, to attempt to measure and explain changes in technical efficiency. Our results confirm that...

The authors aim to describe and discuss the likely effects of three recent policy measures related to the financing of the Spanish National Health System which have been introduced over the period 1996 - 2002 under the conservative Popular Party government. First, tax incentives for private...