Supply-induced demand
In the healthcare system, supply-induced demand is the expansion of services by doctors . It is the part of the demand that is asked by the customer beyond the original demand and is due to the intervention of the provider.
The information gap between doctor and patient opens up the possibility for the doctor to influence the extent of the "demand" of his services to his economic advantage. The information given to the patient about the necessity of certain diagnosis and therapy options can be influenced by the doctor. The patient's inability to make judgments can lead to more services being provided and billed than is medically necessary. According to a much-cited study from the canton of Bern , the supply induction is related to the density of doctors, according to which more doctors provide more services per patient. The identical results are evaluated completely differently by researchers. Medical progress is also discussed as a trigger. High investment costs for new devices have to be amortized, which leads to the provision of non-indexed services. The supply-induced demand is in direct competition with medical ethics .
The existence of supplier-induced demand has not yet been empirically proven, so it is only justified theoretically and ultimately only assumed. However, given the general problems of social insurance, this assumption seems so important that it is initially felt to be correct, since it seems to identify a reason for the problems of social insurance .
literature
- Stefan Schmidhuber: Analysis of the decision-making behavior of providers of health services: theory and empiricism . GRIN Verlag, 2005, ISBN 3-638-39514-6 .
Individual evidence
- ^ Johann-Matthias von der Schulenburg, Wolfgang Greiner: Health Economics . Mohr Siebeck, 2007, ISBN 978-3-16-149060-6 , pp. 162–.
- ↑ K. Kraft, J.-M. Graf vdSchulenburg: Co-Insurance and supplier-induced demand in Medical Care: What do we have to expect as the physician's response to increased out-of-pocket payments? In: R. Richter (Ed.): Journal of institutional and theoretical economics. Tuebingen 1986.
- ^ R. Labelle, G. Stoddart, T. Rice: A re-examination of the meaning and importance of supplier-induced demand. In: Journal of health economics. 13, 1994, p. 350.
- ↑ A. Kern: Doctor-induced demand in outpatient care. (= Economic discussion series. Volume 225). Univ., Inst. For Economics, 2002.
