title: A stated preference approach to assessing health care-quality improvements in Palestine: from theoretical validity to policy implications.
abstract: User fees have been promoted as a potential complementary funding mechanism for health care in developing countries. In this paper, we appraise the use of contingent valuation (CV) as a tool to help develop user fees schemes that could be used to assist in allocating, and partially fund, health care. A random sample of 499 patients seeking care in primary health care centers, in Palestine, were asked to reveal their willingness to pay values for specified improvements in the quality of delivered medical care. Empirical analysis suggests that, in this context, CV can lead to internally consistent results and useful policy implications.
authors.affiliation: French National Institute of Medical Research, Unit 379, Regional Center for Disease Control of South-Eastern France (INSERM U379/ORS), Marseille, France. awad@birzeit.edu
authors.forename: Awad
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Mataria
authors.forename: Cam
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Donaldson
authors.forename: Stéphane
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Luchini
authors.forename: Jean-Paul
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Moatti
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D018912:Arabs; D001294:Attitude to Health / Q000208:ethnology; D005249:Fees and Charges; D005260:Female; D005382:Financing, Personal; D006291:Health Policy; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008877:Middle East; D017059:Models, Econometric; D011320:Primary Health Care / Q000191:economics*; D011787:Quality of Health Care / Q000191:economics*; D012044:Regression Analysis; D015203:Reproducibility of Results