|
Kenneth Leonard, Joshua Graff Zivin
NBER Working Paper No. 9797*
Issued in June 2003
NBER Program(s): HC
HE
The NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health provides summaries of publications like this.
You can sign up to receive the NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health by email.
---- Abstract -----
We compare the more common physician compensation method of fee-for-service to the less common payment-for-outcomes method. This paper combines an investigation of the theoretical properties of both of these payment regimes with a unique data set from rural Cameroon in which patients can choose between outcome and service based payments. We show that consideration of the role of patient effort in the production of health leads to important differences in the performance of these contracts. Theory and empirical evidence show that when illnesses require (or are responsive to) large amounts of both patient and practitioner effort, outcome based payment schemes are superior to effort based schemes. The traditional healer -- a practitioner who offers health services on an outcome-contingent basis -- is advanced as an important example of how patient effort can be better understood and tapped in health care.
*Published: Kenneth L. Leonard & Joshua Graff Zivin, 2005.
"Outcome versus service based payments in health care: lessons from African traditional healers,"
Health Economics,
John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 14(6), pages 575-593.
Would you like an annual subscription to NBER Working Papers? Click
here for more information.
You may purchase this paper on-line in .pdf format
from SSRN.com ($5) for electronic delivery.
Information for subscribers and others expecting no-cost downloads
Machine-readable bibliographic record -
MARC,
RIS,
BibTeX
| 
