Readmission treatment price and product quality in the hospital sector
研究了再入院治疗费用对医院服务质量的影响，发现其效果取决于质量对再入院率的影响与对未来需求的拉动之间的平衡，为医疗政策制定提供参考。
In this paper, we study the effect of readmission treatment payment in a dynamic framework characterised by competition among hospitals and sluggish beliefs of patients concerning the service quality. We find that the effect of readmission treatment payment depends on the interplay between the effect of quality in lowering readmissions and its effect on future demand. When the readmission occurrence strongly depends on the service quality, the higher the readmission treatment payment for hospitals, the lower the incentive to provide quality. Instead, when readmission depends barely on quality, the readmission payment acts as the treatment price for first admissions, and thus it reinforces the incentive to provide quality. We also show that the detrimental effect of readmission payments on quality are fed by a high degree of demand sluggishness, that is, by situation where current quality has modest effect on future demand changes. Our findings are robust to different equilibrium concepts of the differential game (i.e., open-loop and state-feedback). The results suggest that a discounted regulated price for readmission can be an effective (and cost-free) policy tool to improve health care quality, especially when the market is characterised by sluggish beliefs about quality.