Over-crowding in Emergency Departments (EDs) generates potential inefficiencies. Using regional administrative data, we investigate the impact of an increase in the accessibility of primary care on ED visits in Italy. We test whether extending practice opening hours up to 12 hours/day reduces...

The design of incentive schemes that improve quality of care is a central issue for the healthcare sector. Nowadays we observe many pay-for-performance programs, where payment is contingent on meeting indicators of provider effort, but also other alternative strategies have been introduced, for...

The reformulation of existing boundaries between primary and secondary care, in order to shift selected services traditionally provided by Emergency Departments to community-based alternatives has determined a variety of organisational solutions aimed at reducing the ED overcrowding. One...

Pay-for-performance programs offering additional payments to GPs can be used not only to improve the quality of care but also for cost containment purposes. In this paper, we analyse the impact of removing financial incentives in primary care that were aimed at containing hospital expenditure in...

Although the study of the association between interventions in primary care and health outcomes continues to produce mixed findings, programs designed to promote the greater compliance of General Practitioners and their diabetic patients with treatment guidelines have been increasingly...

The reformulation of existing boundaries between primary and secondary care, in order to shift selected services traditionally provided by Emergency Departments to community-based alternatives has determined a variety of organisational solutions aimed at reducing the ED overcrowding. One...