The aim of this paper is to assess whether cost-containment has been affected by recent pharmaceutical reimbursement reforms that have been introduced in the Spanish health care system over the period 1996-2002, under the conservative Popular Party government. Four main reimbursement policies...

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...

Attention-Defcit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is young children's most common mental health disorder. We aim to provide causal estimates of the diferential costs for the non-adult population with ADHD. We used longitudinal administrative data covering the non-adult population over fve years and...

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...

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 objective of this paper is to provide a description and analysis of the main costing and pricing (reimbursement) systems employed by hospitals in the Spanish National Health System (NHS). Hospitals cost calculations are mostly based on a full costing approach as opposite to other systems...

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...

This paper aims to estimate a translog stochastic frontier production function with panel data of 147 mixed Catalan farms in a five-year period. The mean output efficiency in the period analysed was estimated to be 62.3%. We added management variables to the traditional factors explaining farm...