Less Physician Practice Competition Is Associated With Higher Prices Paid For Common Procedures
Less Physician Practice Competition Is Associated With Higher Prices Paid For Common Procedures
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DOI：
10.1377/hlthaff.2015.0412
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发表时间：
2015-10-01
期刊：
影响因子：
9.7
通讯作者：
Baker, Laurence C.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Austin, Daniel R.;Baker, Laurence C.
医生群体的集中程度一直在稳步上升，这可能会影响医生服务的价格。我们评估了2010年医生竞争与私人优先提供者组织为15种常见的高成本医疗程序所支付的价格之间的关系，以了解医生执业的更高集中度以及随之而来的市场力量的增强是否与服务价格的提高有关。利用县级层面的医生执业集中度衡量指标和县级平均价格，并对一系列其他区域特征进行统计控制，我们发现，在我们所研究的15种医疗程序中，有12种程序的医生执业集中度与价格存在显著关联。对于这些程序，医生平均集中度最高的县的价格比最低的县高出8% - 26%。我们得出的结论是，医生竞争经常与价格相关。影响医生执业组织的政策应考虑到这一点。
Concentration among physician groups has been steadily increasing, which may affect prices for physician services. We assessed the relationship in 2010 between physician competition and prices paid by private preferred provider organizations for fifteen common, high-cost procedures to understand whether higher concentration of physician practices and accompanying increased market power were associated with higher prices for services. Using county-level measures of the concentration of physician practices and county average prices, and statistically controlling for a range of other regional characteristics, we found that physician practice concentration and prices were significantly associated for twelve of the fifteen procedures we studied. For these procedures, counties with the highest average physician concentrations had prices 8-26 percent higher than prices in the lowest counties. We concluded that physician competition is frequently associated with prices. Policies that would influence physician practice organization should take this into consideration.