A debate is going on in health care systems with capitation payment for general practitioner services about the disincentives of the system, leading to a low level of interventions by GPs and a high level of referrals. Increasing the fee-for-service element in the remuneration of GPs is seen as...

One of the problems in the international comparison of health care systems is the small number of units of analysis. Usually only a small number of systems is compared which makes cross-sectional statistical analysis impossible. The two obvious solutions to this problem--neither of which is...

Whether one examines the average length of hospital stay at the level of geographic areas, at the level of hospitals, or at the level of doctors, length-of-stay figures are known to vary widely. Even for hospital admissions for comparable surgical procedures among comparable groups of patients,...

Workload of general practitioners plays an important role in discussions about list size and remuneration in health care systems with fixed patient lists and capitation payments, such as in the Netherlands and in the United Kingdom. Against the background of the fairness of differences in income...

European health care systems are facing diverse challenges. In health policy, strong primary care is seen as key to deal with these challenges. European countries differ in how strong their primary care systems are. Two groups of traditionally weak primary care systems are distinguished. First a...