Purpose: Researchers, policymakers and hospital managers often encounter numerous quality measures when assessing hospital quality. The purpose of this paper is to address the challenge of summarising, interpreting and comparing multiple quality measures across different quality dimensions by...

The issue of locating locally unfriendly but socially beneficial facilities such as landfills and power stations is an important public policy concern in many countries. Local residents in the area where such facilities are to be located tend to exhibit strong opposition, no doubt due to the...

The increasing prominence of the private sector in health care provision has generated considerable interest in understanding its implications on quality and cost. This paper investigates the phenomenon of cream skimming in a mixed public-private hospital setting using the novel approach of...

This paper evaluates the effect of introducing two new workforce roles under a pilot program conducted in Victoria, Australia. The trial took place at a regional hospital's emergency department (ED) between 1 July 2008 and 30 June 2009. The evaluation is based on three outcome measures: waiting...

The negative health effects of smoking are substantial and well documented. There are, however, few studies that focus on another aspect of the costs of smoking, namely its impact on productive activities, specifically in terms of productivity loss as a result of smoking. Previous economic...

This article investigates whether patients who used a mixture of private and public hospital care have higher total hospital utilization than those who exclusively used either public or private hospital care. Using Australian hospital administrative data of heart disease patients, we found that...

This paper proposes a vertical control model that features two-part tariff pricing, leader-fringe-follower competition, and investment to characterize the conditions under which parallel imports will (or will not) occur when such activities are legally permitted. In addition, we analyze the...