title: Politicians' and hospital managers' trade-offs in the choice of reimbursement scheme: a discrete choice experiment.
abstract: Trade-offs in the choice of hospital reimbursement schemes are widely discussed in the health economics literature but no one has previously, to this authors' knowledge, made an attempt at quantifying how purchasers and providers trade-off anticipated outcomes of reimbursement schemes. The purpose of this study is to elicit Danish county council politicians' and hospital managers' preferences for the anticipated incentives and consequences embedded in reimbursement schemes using the discrete choice method. Results indicate that politicians and hospital managers agree that increasing the number of patients treated is the most important objective for the choice of reimbursement scheme. The second most important objective to the politicians is to provide budget safety whereas inducing increased quality of treatment is third. Hospital managers rank inducement of increased quality of treatment as the second most important objective and have the county's budget safety as their third most important objective.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Public Health, Health Economics, University of Southern Denmark, Winsløwparken 19, 3, Odense C 5000, Denmark. mbe@sam.sdu.dk
authors.forename: Mickael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Bech
mesh_terms: D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D002755:Choice Behavior; D003362:Cost-Benefit Analysis; D003659:Decision Making, Organizational; D003718:Denmark; D006286:Health Planning Councils; D006740:Hospital Administrators / Q000523:psychology* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006801:Humans; D007350:Insurance, Hospitalization / Q000191:economics*; D007902:Length of Stay; D017059:Models, Econometric; D009937:Organizational Objectives; D017063:Outcome Assessment, Health Care; D011050:Policy Making; D011057:Politics; D012052:Reimbursement, Incentive / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*