Patient responsiveness to a differential deductible: empirical results from The Netherlands
Health insurers may use financial incentives to encourage their enrollees to choose preferred providers for medical treatment. Empirical evidence whether differences in cost-sharing rates across providers affects patient choice behavior is, especially from Europe, limited. This paper examines the effect of a differential deductible to steer patient provider choice in a Dutch regional market for varicose veins treatment. Using individual patients’ choice data and information about their out-of-pocket payments covering the year of the experiment and 1 year before, we estimate a conditional logit... Mehr ...
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Dokumenttyp: | Artikel |
Erscheinungsdatum: | 2018 |
Schlagwörter: | Patient channeling · Preferred providers · Tiered networks · Patient choice |
Sprache: | Englisch |
Permalink: | https://search.fid-benelux.de/Record/base-27216740 |
Datenquelle: | BASE; Originalkatalog |
Powered By: | BASE |
Link(s) : | http://repub.eur.nl/pub/112908 |
Health insurers may use financial incentives to encourage their enrollees to choose preferred providers for medical treatment. Empirical evidence whether differences in cost-sharing rates across providers affects patient choice behavior is, especially from Europe, limited. This paper examines the effect of a differential deductible to steer patient provider choice in a Dutch regional market for varicose veins treatment. Using individual patients’ choice data and information about their out-of-pocket payments covering the year of the experiment and 1 year before, we estimate a conditional logit model that explicitly controls for pre-existing patient preferences. Our results suggest that in this natural experiment designating preferred providers and waiving the deductible for enrollees using these providers significantly influenced patient choice. The average cross-price elasticity of demand is found to be 0.02, indicating that patient responsiveness to the cost-sharing differential itself was low. Unlike fixed cost-sharing differences, the deductible exemption was conditional on the patient’s other medical expenses occurring in the policy year. The differential deductible did, therefore, not result in a financial benefit for patients with annual costs exceeding their total deductible.