Carlsen F, Grytten J
Department of Economics, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, NTNU, Trondheim, Norway.
J Health Econ. 2000 Sep;19(5):731-53. doi: 10.1016/s0167-6296(00)00044-8.
This study examines the relationship between supply of primary physicians and consumer satisfaction with access to, and quality of, primary physician services in Norway. The purpose is to throw light on a long-standing controversy in the literature on supplier inducement (SID): the interpretation of the positive association between physician density and per capita utilization of health services. We find that an increase in the number of physicians leads to improved consumer satisfaction, and that the relationship between satisfaction and physician density exhibits diminishing returns to scale. Our results suggest that policy-makers can compute the socially optimal density of physicians without knowledge about whether SID exists, if one accepts the (controversial) assumption that consumer satisfaction is a valid proxy for patient utility.
本研究考察了挪威初级医生供给与消费者对初级医生服务的可及性和质量满意度之间的关系。目的是阐明文献中关于供给诱导需求（SID）的长期争议：医生密度与人均医疗服务利用率之间正相关关系的解释。我们发现，医生数量的增加会提高消费者满意度，且满意度与医生密度之间的关系呈现出规模收益递减。我们的结果表明，如果接受消费者满意度是患者效用的有效替代这一（有争议的）假设，政策制定者在不知道SID是否存在的情况下也能计算出社会最优医生密度。
