Scope and scale inefficiencies in physician practices.
Using a national data set, this paper looks at the efficiency of physician practices, focusing on scopes of service by comparing single specialty groups and multispecialty groups. An analysis of efficiency using DEA indicates that there are scope inefficiencies from combining different types of providers into a single practice. Most of the inefficiency is due to technical rather than allocative reasons. In addition, we find that larger practices are able to capture efficiencies of scope, but incur inefficiencies of scale.
Rosenman
Robert
R
Department of Economics, Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99164-4741, USA. yamaka@wsu.edu
Friesner
Daniel
D
D000704:Analysis of Variance; D017598:Efficiency, Organizational / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006123:Group Practice / Q000145:classification / Q000458:organization & administration*; D006302:Health Services Research; D006801:Humans; D008511:Medicine / Q000145:classification / Q000458:organization & administration* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D017059:Models, Econometric; D011320:Primary Health Care / Q000145:classification / Q000458:organization & administration* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D012044:Regression Analysis; D013038:Specialization; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric; D014481:United States