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Healthcare Quality by Specialists under a Mixed Compensation System: an Empirical Analysis

General Economics 2024-02-08 v1 Economics

Abstract

We analyze the effects of a mixed compensation (MC) scheme for specialists on the quality of their healthcare services. We exploit a reform implemented in Quebec (Canada) in 1999. The government introduced a payment mechanism combining a per diem with a reduced fee per clinical service. Using a large patient/physician panel dataset, we estimate a multi-state multi-spell hazard model analogous to a difference-in-differences approach. We compute quality indicators from our model. Our results suggest that the reform reduced the quality of MC specialist services measured by the risk of re-hospitalization and mortality after discharge. These effects vary across specialties.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2402.04472,
  title  = {Healthcare Quality by Specialists under a Mixed Compensation System: an Empirical Analysis},
  author = {Damien Echevin and Bernard Fortin and Aristide Houndetoungan},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2402.04472},
  year   = {2024}
}