Background: Economic theory strongly suggests that better information about the quality of care affects patients' choice of health service providers. However, we have little empirical evidence about the impact of information provided on provider's choice. There is, for example, no systematic...

Background: Recently, enormous efforts to measure the quality of health care have been made (i.e. AHRQ, OECD) in order to get information about ways to improve the quality of health care. However this area of research is still in an early stage of development and more research has to be done....

This paper shows that patients with private health insurance (PHI) are being offered significantly shorter waiting times than patients with statutory health insurance (SHI) in German acute hospital care. This behavior may be driven by the higher expected profitability of PHI relative to SHI...

This paper shows that patients with private health insurance (PHI) are being offered significantly shorter waiting times than patients with statutory health insurance (SHI) in German acute hospital care. This behavior may be driven by the higher expected profitability of PHI relative to SHI...

Hintergrund: In Deutschland werden die Wartezeiten auf medizinische Dienstleistungen öffentlich und ordnungspolitisch immer wieder problematisiert. Dies gilt vor allem für den niedergelassenen Ärztebereich. In der vorliegenden Arbeit wird erstmalig der akutstationäre Sektor analysiert....