Jove
Visualize
Contact Us
JoVE
x logofacebook logolinkedin logoyoutube logo
ABOUT JoVE
OverviewLeadershipBlogJoVE Help Center
AUTHORS
Publishing ProcessEditorial BoardScope & PoliciesPeer ReviewFAQSubmit
LIBRARIANS
TestimonialsSubscriptionsAccessResourcesLibrary Advisory BoardFAQ
RESEARCH
JoVE JournalMethods CollectionsJoVE Encyclopedia of ExperimentsArchive
EDUCATION
JoVE CoreJoVE BusinessJoVE Science EducationJoVE Lab ManualFaculty Resource CenterFaculty Site
Terms & Conditions of Use
Privacy Policy
Policies

Related Experiment Videos

Is waiting-time prioritisation welfare improving?

Hugh Gravelle1, Luigi Siciliani

  • 1National Primary Care Research and Development Centre, Centre for Health Economics, University of York, UK.

Health Economics
|July 20, 2007
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Related Concept Videos

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by
Same author

The impact of waiting time on patient outcomes: The case of joint replacement surgery.

Economics and human biology·2026
Same author

Socioeconomic inequalities in the quality of care for long-term conditions in England: retrospective, observational study of electronic primary care records from the Clinical Practice Research Datalink.

Journal of epidemiology and community health·2026
Same author

What motivates (un)satisfied physicians?

Social science & medicine (1982)·2026
Same author

Co-benefits of health: from evidence to governance, politics and advocacy.

European journal of public health·2026
Same author

Policies and initiatives to facilitate timely discharge from hospitals: a comparison of six European countries.

Health policy (Amsterdam, Netherlands)·2026
Same author

Paying for Health Gains Using Patient Reported Outcome Measures.

Health economics·2026
Same journal

Healthcare Costs Following Medical Gender-Affirmation: Evidence From Whole-of-Population Australian Administrative Data.

Health economics·2026
Same journal

Lead in Drinking Water and Child Health: Evidence From Jackson, Mississippi.

Health economics·2026
Same journal

Health on the Move: The Impact of Poverty Alleviation Relocation on Healthcare Utilization in China.

Health economics·2026
Same journal

The Effects of Compulsory Licensing: A Case Study of HIV Drugs.

Health economics·2026
Same journal

Beyond Tobacco Prevention: The Effects of Tobacco 21 Laws on Young Adults' Body Weight.

Health economics·2026
Same journal

Assessing the Estimands and Estimates of Hospitalization Rates in Health Economics and Clinical Medicine.

Health economics·2026
See all related articles

Prioritizing patients in healthcare rationing can improve welfare under specific conditions. This occurs when observable benefits align with unobservable benefits, particularly with uniform or log-concave distributions.

Area of Science:

  • Health Economics
  • Healthcare Management
  • Public Health Policy

Background:

  • Healthcare systems often use waiting times for rationing when financial prices are low.
  • Patient prioritization, offering shorter waits to specific groups, is a common practice.
  • The welfare impact of prioritization is complex, especially with unobserved patient benefit components.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate whether patient prioritization in healthcare rationing improves overall welfare.
  • To analyze the conditions under which prioritizing patients with higher observable benefits is welfare-improving.
  • To determine the specific benefit distributions that optimize or preclude welfare gains from prioritization.

Main Methods:

  • Economic modeling of healthcare rationing with waiting times.

Related Experiment Videos

  • Analysis of a two-component benefit function (observable and unobservable).
  • Derivation of conditions for welfare improvement based on benefit distributions.

    • Main Results:

    • Positive prioritization (shorter waits for higher observable benefit) is welfare-improving if mean observable benefit of indifferent patients is less than that of treated patients.
    • Welfare improvement is guaranteed if unobservable benefit is uniformly distributed or if observable benefit is uniform and unobservable benefit is log-concave.
    • Prioritization is never welfare-increasing if the unobservable benefit follows a negative exponential distribution.

    Conclusions:

    • Healthcare prioritization can enhance welfare, but its effectiveness is contingent on the underlying distributions of observable and unobservable patient benefits.
    • Specific distributional assumptions (uniform, log-concave) support welfare gains from prioritization.
    • The negative exponential distribution for unobservable benefits represents a boundary case where prioritization does not increase welfare.