Spatial competition and quality: Evidence from the English family doctor market

Hugh Stanley Emrys Gravelle; Dan Liu; Carol Propper; Rita Santos

doi:10.1016/j.jhealeco.2019.102249

Spatial competition and quality: Evidence from the English family doctor market

Hugh Stanley Emrys Gravelle, Dan Liu, Carol Propper, Rita Santos

Centre for Health Economics

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

We examine whether family doctor firms in England respond to local competition by increasing their quality. We measure quality in terms of clinical performance and patient-reported satisfaction to capture its multi-dimensional nature. We use a panel covering 8 years for over 8000 English general practices. We measure competition as the number of rival doctors within a small distance and control for a large number of potential confounders. We find that increases in local competition are associated with increases in patient satisfaction and to a lesser extent in clinical quality. However, the magnitude of the effect is small.

Original language	English
Article number	102249
Number of pages	15
Journal	Journal of Health Economics
Volume	68
Early online date	17 Oct 2019
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhealeco.2019.102249
Publication status	Published - 1 Dec 2019

Keywords

quality
healthcare
choice
competition
family physicians

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10.1016/j.jhealeco.2019.102249

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Cite this

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