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The effect of capitation on GPs' referral decisions
1Center for Health Administration, University of Oslo, Norway. tor.iversen@samfunnsmed.uio.no
Health Economics
|May 3, 2000
Abstract:
In the Norwegian capitation trial, the payment system for general practitioners (GPs) has been changed; a practice allowance component has been replaced by a capitation component and the fee-per-item component constitutes a smaller part of a GPs practice income than previously. From the theoretical modelling of GPs' referral decisions, we predict that the replacement of the practice allowance by a capitation component will increase the rate of referrals to specialists. This hypothesis is supported by an exploratory empirical study with data from a sample of GPs participating in the experiment.