The perception of the health sector from an economic policy point of view is changing. In the past, health expenditure was mostly seen as a "cost" item, probably because many medical treatments are covered by public health insurance. However, policymakers are increasingly realizing that a...

Best-worst scaling (BWS), also known as maximum-difference scaling, is a multiattribute approach to measuring preferences. BWS aims at the analysis of preferences regarding a set of attributes, their levels or alternatives. It is a stated-preference method based on the assumption that...

Low-income countries are plagued by a high burden of preventable and curable disease as well as unmet need for healthcare, but detailed microeconomic evidence on the relationship between supply-side factors and service use is limited. Causality has rarely been assessed due to the challenges...

Background: The regional availability of specialized physicians is an important aspect in healthcare of patients with IBD. The association between physician density and healthcare is not yet clear. Most studies did not consider district type, which reflects population density. Our research...

This paper examines the extent to which agglomeration of the hospital service industry enhances the productivity of producing health care. Specifically, we use a large set of private insurance claims from the FAIR Health database to show that an increasing spatial concentration of hospital...

Public-private partnership (PPP) initiatives are extending around the world, especially in Europe, as an innovation to traditional public health systems, with the intention of making them more efficient. There is a varied range of PPP models with different degrees of responsibility from simple...

Background The main objective of this study is to assess the performance of the global health system, emphasising the contribution of people’s happiness to health system efficiency across countries. Technical efficiency (TE) scores are estimated using the output-oriented variable returns to...

Background: Poor health increases the likelihood of experiencing poverty by reducing a person’s ability to work and imparting costs associated with receiving medical treatment. Universal health care is a means of protecting against the impoverishing impact of high healthcare costs. This study...

Background: By performing case management, general practitioners and health care assistants can provide additional benefits to their chronically ill patients. However, the economic effects of such case management interventions often remain unclear although how to manage the burden of chronic...

For admission to statutory health insurance, it is common in Switzerland that health care providers negotiate prices for health care services directly with health insurers. Once they agree upon a price, they must submit the resulting price to the Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH), which can...