Department of Health Management and Health Economics, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.
Health Services Research Unit, Akershus University Hospital, Oslo, Norway.
Health Econ. 2022 Jun;31(6):1202-1227. doi: 10.1002/hec.4489. Epub 2022 Apr 3.
The assumption of patient-regarding physicians has been widely adopted in the health economics literature. Physicians' patient-regarding preferences are often described as the concern for the health benefits of medical treatments, and thus closely related to the norms and ethics of the medical profession. In this paper, we ask whether physicians' patient-regarding preferences include a concern for their patient's consumption opportunities alongside patient's health benefits. To identify and quantify physicians' preferences, we design and conduct an incentivized laboratory experiment where choices determine separately the health benefits and the consumption opportunities of a real patient admitted to the nearest hospital. We find strong evidence that future physicians care about their patients' consumption opportunities.
患者导向型医生的假设在卫生经济学文献中得到了广泛的采用。医生的患者导向偏好通常被描述为对医疗治疗健康效益的关注，因此与医疗行业的规范和道德密切相关。在本文中，我们询问医生的患者导向偏好是否包括对患者消费机会的关注以及患者的健康效益。为了识别和量化医生的偏好，我们设计并进行了一项激励性实验室实验，其中选择分别确定了送往最近医院的真实患者的健康效益和消费机会。我们有强有力的证据表明，未来的医生关心患者的消费机会。
