The Effect of Doctor's Payment Method on Patient's Medical Care Use: Revisit of the Patient's Asymmetric Information Problem

Abstract

Although the patient’s problem with access to health information has been improved due to rapidly developing information technologies, such as the internet, some patients still do not have enough ability to understand, interpret, and analyze the health information. Given this view on the patient’s asymmetric information problem, if a doctor provides sufficient effort to help patients understand and interpret medical information, the efficiency of patient’s medical care use could be improved. This paper shows firstly that the patient’s inefficient use of medical care originates from his information problems, such as the misperception of the effectiveness of medical care and secondly suggests that if the doctor makes sufficient effort to correct patient’s information problems, the inefficiency can be ameliorated. This paper also suggests the manipulation of a doctor’s payment method can lead a doctor to provide optimal level of efforts which can in turn lead patients to use the optimal level of medical care. With an optimal level of effort, a doctor can more easily achieve a patient’s compliance with the newly recommended amount of medical care.

Keywords

• Patient’s Asymmetric Information Problem(환자의 비대칭적 정보의 문제)
• Efficiency of Patient’s Medical Care Use(환자의 의료서비스 이용의 효율)
• Doctor’s Effort(의사의 노력)
• Doctor’s Rate of Supplyside Cost Sharing(의사의 공급 측면의 비용 부담 비율)