[Efficiency of general practice in Switzerland].
BACKGROUND
In their capacity as gatekeepers, affect the entire cost of treatment of patients including cost for medication and inpatient care. Thus, it is of special interest to examine the production process of general practitioners.


OBJECTIVE
To study efficiency differences between general medical practices, taking into account a possible Managed Care participation by the physician.


METHODS
A stochastic frontier analysis based on billing data of 1,500 Swiss physicians from 1997 - 1999 is applied to measure the relative efficiency of general practitioners. The number of consultations serves as output and the charged services as inputs of production.


RESULTS
Most productive physicians are members of primary physicians' networks, in which the gate-keeping function of general practitioners is of central importance. For the "production" of one consultation they use 15 percent less resources than an average physician in a conventional medical practice.


CONCLUSIONS
In principle, assessment of efficiency of primary care physicians is possible. Differences in efficiency between physicians can be explained by characteristics of the individual medical practice. Disadvantages of the approach exist in the neglect of the patients' severity of illness and in having indirect measures of quality of medical care available.
Werblow
A
A
Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg. Andreas.Werblow@medizin.uni-magdeburg.de
D000465:Algorithms; D003198:Computer Simulation; D017598:Efficiency, Organizational; D005194:Family Practice / Q000191:economics* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D008329:Managed Care Programs / Q000191:economics* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D017059:Models, Econometric; D015233:Models, Statistical; D011320:Primary Health Care / Q000191:economics* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D013557:Switzerland