Organisational determinants of production and efficiency in general practice: a population-based study

Physicians' assessment of the Bavarian drug-expenditure control system: a qualitative study

BACKGROUND

In 2014 a new system for drug expenditures, the Wirkstoffvereinbarung (WSV, English: Active substance agreement) was implemented in Bavaria. In pre-defined indication groups, economic prescription of medications shall be enabled based on the selection, quantity, and proportion of an individual drug. Ambulatory care physicians receive quarterly trend reports on their prescribing behavior. This study examines physicians' perceptions of the WSV.

METHODS

Qualitative interviews (n = 20) and seven focus groups (n = 36) were conducted with ambulatory care physicians (e.g. general practitioners, cardiologists, pulmonologists). The methodology followed Qualitative Content Analysis.

RESULTS

Physicians generally accepted the necessity of prescribing economically. The majority of them rated the WSV positively and better than the previous system. As an improvement, they especially named timely feedback in form of easily understandable trend reports, encouraging self-reflection as well as allowing early control options. Problems perceived were drug discount contracts that were strongly criticized as leading to patients mixing up medications. Some perceived constraints of therapeutic freedom.

CONCLUSIONS

The implementation of the WSV is mostly viewed positively by physicians. The restrictions of therapeutic freedom partially perceived might be met by improved information on the reasons why some drugs are rated as less economical than others.

TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER

Main ID: DRKS00019820 (German Register of Clinical Studies and World Health Organization).

Skill-mix change and outcomes in primary care: Longitudinal analysis of general practices in England 2015-2019

BACKGROUND

Increasing the employment of staff with new clinical roles in primary care has been proposed as a solution to the shortages of GPs and nurses. However, evidence of the impacts this has on practice outcomes is limited. We examine how outcomes changed following changes in skill-mix in general practices in England.

METHODS

We obtained annual data on staff in 6,296 English general practices between 2015 and 2019 and grouped professionals into four categories: GPs, Nurses, Health Professionals, and Healthcare Associate Professionals. We linked 10 indicators of quality of care covering the dimensions of accessibility, clinical effectiveness, user experiences and health system costs. We used both fixed-effect and first-differences regressions to model changes in staff composition and outcomes, adjusting for practice and population factors.

RESULTS

Employment increased over time for all four staff groups, with largest increases for Healthcare Professionals (from 0.04 FTE per practice in 2015 to 0.28 in 2019) and smallest for Nurses who experienced a 3.5 percent growth. Increases in numbers of GPs and Nurses were positively associated with changes in practice activity and outcomes. The introduction of new roles was negatively associated with patient satisfaction: a one FTE increase in Health Professionals was associated with decreases of 0.126 [-0.175, -0.078] and 0.116 [-0.161, -0.071] standard deviations in overall patient satisfaction and satisfaction with making an appointment. Pharmacists improved medicine prescribing outcomes. All staff categories were associated with higher health system costs. There was little evidence of direct complementarity or substitution between different staff groups.

CONCLUSIONS

Introduction of new roles to support GPs does not have straightforward effects on quality or patient satisfaction. Problems can arise from the complex adaptation required to adjust practice organisation and from the novelty of these roles to patients. These findings suggest caution over the implementation of policies encouraging more employment of different professionals in primary care.

Production function for modeling hospital activities. The case of Polish county hospitals

The aim of the article is to present the use of production function as a source of knowledge for managers of county hospitals to make rational decisions so as to achieve economic efficiency, including naturally the financial efficiency. The healthcare sector in each country differs from other sectors of the economy. The economically effective operation of county hospitals in Poland is very difficult due to all their determinants. Therefore, all economic analyses should be used to help hospital managers achieve this goal, and production function remains underestimated as a source of knowledge. The Cobb-Douglas and translog production functions were used as sources of knowledge for decision-making by county hospitals. Total number of patient-days was a dependent variable; and the total number of beds, the number of doctors and nurses (in full time equivalents, FTEs) and costs (of materials, electricity, services) were a set of explanatory variables. The significance of explanatory variables most often appeared in models accounting for the workload of nurses. On the other hand, the greatest fit measured with the residual standard error was characterised by models accounting for the number of beds. For each type of production function, the diversified results obtained show the properties of production function. This kind of knowledge is not provided by analyses which are not based on production functions.

Approaches to Measure Efficiency in Primary Care: A Systematic Literature Review

BACKGROUND

Primary care in England is facing increasing pressure due to the increasing number and complexity of consultations and the declining number of doctors per head of population. The improvement of primary care efficiency and productivity should be a priority, to ensure that future investments in the medical workforce can cope with the increasingly large and complex demand for care.

OBJECTIVES

This paper presents a systematic literature review of studies that define or measure efficiency in primary care in high-income settings. The review of the existing definitions of primary care efficiency and their limitations will inform future research on the measurement of efficiency in primary care in England and its determinants.

METHODS

Literature searches were performed on Embase, Medline, and EconLit in January 2020. The records that passed the screening were reviewed in full text, and data on the study settings, the efficiency definition, and the efficiency analysis were extracted.

RESULTS

Of the 2590 non-duplicate records retrieved from the searches, 38 papers were included in the analysis. The volume of the literature on primary care efficiency has evolved significantly from the 1980s, with the majority of the published studies focussing on European health systems. The setting most often analysed was primary care centres. Output was usually expressed using measures of primary care utilisation, with or without quality adjustments. Reference to the health outcomes achieved was, however, limited. Inputs were more commonly expressed in labour terms, while the exogenous variables related either to the characteristics of the patient population or the organisation of primary care. While all studies included an analysis of technical efficiency, consideration of allocative or cost efficiency or the determinants of productivity (e.g. technological change, skill mix) was rare.

CONCLUSIONS

The main limitations that future research on primary care efficiency should address relate to the definition of output. Current approaches to measure the impact on health and the multiple dimensions of output are not sufficient to represent the valued output of primary care. In light of the recent changes in the model of primary care delivery in England, future research should also investigate the impact of technological change on productivity and the scope for substitution across staff roles.

Can General Practitioners Be More Productive? The Impact of Teamwork and Cooperation with Nurses on GP Activities

The integration of primary care organizations and interprofessional cooperation is encouraged in many countries to both improve the productive and allocative efficiency of care provision and address the unequal geographical distribution of general practitioners (GPs). In France, a pilot experiment promoted the vertical integration of and teamwork between GPs and nurses. This pilot experiment relied on the staffing and training of nurses; skill mixing, including the authorization to shift tasks from GPs to nurses; and new remuneration schemes. This article evaluates the overall impact of this pilot experiment over the period 2010-2017 on GP activities based on the following indicators: number of working days, patients seen at least once, patients registered, and visits delivered. We control for endogeneity and reduce selection bias by using a case-control design combining coarsened exact matching and difference-in-differences estimates on panel data. We find a small positive impact on the number of GP working days (+1.2%) following enrollment and a more pronounced effect on the number of patients seen (+7.55%) or registered (+6.87%). However, we find no effect on the number of office and home visits. In this context, cooperation and teamwork between GPs and nurses seem to improve access to care for patients.

The Efficiency of self-employed general practitioners and factors affecting it: a study in Iran

OBJECTIVE

Physicians as an economic firm make use of available resources such as time, human forces and space to provide healthcare services. The current study aimed at estimating the technical efficiency of Iranian self-employed general practitioners (GPs) and its effective factors using data envelopment analysis and regression analysis.

RESULTS

About 2% of the GPs were fully efficient and the remaining (98%) were inefficient. Almost, 2.09% of the physicians had constant returns to scale, and 31.41% and 66.49% of them had increasing and decreasing returns to scale, respectively. According to the regression estimates, gender (female) (β = 3.776, P = 0.072), age (β = 0.475, P = 0.013), practice experience (β = - 0.477, P = 0.015), contract with the insurer (β = - 6.475, P = 0.005) and economic expectations (β = 1.939, P = 0.014) showed significant effect on GPs inefficiency. Most of the GPs surveyed did not optimally allocate their time and physical and human resources to provide their services. Female GPs, older ones, those with fewer practice experience, those with higher economic expectations, and the GPs with no insurance contract were more inefficient. Increasing the insurance coverage of self-employed GPs and providing them with training in office economic management can reduce their inefficiency.

A labor requirements function for sizing the health workforce

BACKGROUND

Ensuring healthcare delivery is dependent both on the prediction of the future demand for healthcare services and on the estimation and planning for the Health Human Resources needed to properly deliver these services. Although the Health Human Resources planning is a fascinating and widely researched topic, and despite the number of methodologies that have been used, no consensus on the best way of planning the future workforce requirements has been reported in the literature. This paper aims to contribute to the extension and diversity of the range of available methods to forecast the demand for Health Human Resources and assist in tackling the challenge of translating healthcare services to workforce requirements.

METHODS

A method to empirically quantify the relation between healthcare services and Health Human Resources requirements is proposed. For each one of the three groups of specialties identified-Surgical specialties, Medical specialties and Diagnostic specialties (e.g., pathologists)-a Labor Requirements Function relating the number of physicians with a set of specialty-specific workload and capital variables is developed. This approach, which assumes that health managers and decision-makers control the labor levels more easily than they control the amount of healthcare services demanded, is then applied to a panel dataset comprising information on 142 public hospitals, during a 12-year period.

RESULTS

This method provides interesting insights on healthcare services delivery: the number of physicians required to meet expected variations in the demand for healthcare, the effect of the technological progress on healthcare services delivery, the time spent on each type of care, the impact of Human Resources concentration on productivity, and the possible resource allocations given the opportunity cost of the physicians' labor.

CONCLUSIONS

The empirical method proposed is simple and flexible and produces statistically strong models to estimate Health Human Resources requirements. Moreover, it can enable a more informed allocation of the available resources and help to achieve a more efficient delivery of healthcare services.

Efficiency of physician specialist groups

This is the first study to use stochastic frontier analysis to simultaneously estimate the technical, cost and profit efficiency of physician practices for different physician specialist groups. We base our analysis on a unique panel data set of 4964 physician practices in Germany for the years 2008 to 2010. The data contains information on practice costs and revenues, services provided, as well as physician characteristics and practice characteristics. Additionally we consider a wide range additional variables not previously analyzed in this context (e.g. sub-specialization of physician groups and environmental factors such as physician density in the area). We investigate differences in cost, technical and profit efficiency utilizing production-/cost- and profit-functions with a translog functional form. We estimated the stochastic frontier using the comprehensive one-step approach for panel data following Battese and Coelli (Empir Econ 20(2): 325-332, 10). Overall findings indicate that participation in disease management programs and the degree of specialization are associated with significantly higher technical- cost-, and profit-efficiency for most physician specialist groups, e.g. due to the standardization of processes. In addition, our analyses show that group practices perform significantly better than single practices. This may be due to indivisibilities in expensive technical equipment, which can lead to different health care services being provided by different practice types. A more thorough look at specialist groups suggests that it is important to investigate all efficiency types for different physician groups, as results may depend on the type of efficiency analyzed as well as the physician group in question.

Profit efficiency of physician practices: a stochastic frontier approach using panel data

While determinants of efficiency have been the subject of a large number of studies in the inpatient sector, relatively little is known about factors influencing efficiency of physician practices in the outpatient sector. With our study, we provide the first paper to estimate physician practice profit efficiency and its' determinants. We base our analysis on a unique panel data set of 4964 physician practices for the years 2008 to 2010. The data contains information on practice costs and revenues, services provided, as well as physician and practice characteristics. We specify the profit function of the physician practice as a translog functional form. We estimated the stochastic frontier using the comprehensive one-step approach for panel data of Battese and Coelli (1995). For estimation of the profit function, we regressed yearly profit on several inputs, outputs and input/output price relationships, while we controlled for a range of control variables such as patients' case-mix or share of patients covered by statutory health insurance. We find that participation in disease management programs and the degree of physician practice specialization are associated with significantly higher profit efficiency. In addition, our analyses show that group practices perform significantly better than single practices.

Resource allocation and the burden of co-morbidities among patients diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: an observational cohort study from Danish general practice

Background

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease is a leading cause of mortality, and associated with increased healthcare utilization and healthcare expenditure. In several countries, morbidity-based systems have changed the way resources are allocated in general practice. In primary care, fee-for-services tariffs are often based on political negotiation rather than costing systems. The potential for comprehensive measures of patient morbidity to explain variation in negotiated expenditures for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease has not previously been examined. The aim of this study is to analyze fee-for-service expenditure of patients diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease visiting Danish general practice clinics and further to assess what proportion of fee-for-service expenditure variation was explained by patient morbidity and general practice clinic characteristics, respectively.

Methods

We used patient morbidity characteristics such as diagnostic markers and multi-morbidity adjustment based on adjusted clinical groups (ACGs) and fee-for-service expenditure for a sample of primary care patients for the year 2010. Our sample included 3,973 patients in 59 general practices. We used a multi-level approach.

Results

The average annual fee-for-service expenditure of caring for patients diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in general practice was about EUR 400 per patient. Variation in the expenditures was driven by multimorbidity characteristics up to 28 % where as characteristics such as age and gender only explained 5 %. Expenditures increased progressively with the degree of multimorbidity. In addition, expenditures were higher for patients who had diagnostic markers based on ICPC-2 (body systems and/or components such as infections and symptoms). Nevertheless, 9.8–15.4 % of the variation in expenditure was related to the clinic in which the patient was cared for.

Conclusion

Patient morbidity and general practice clinic characteristics are significant patient-related fee-for-service expenditure drivers in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease care.

The role of information and communication technology in the transformation of the healthcare business model: a case study of Slovenia

BACKGROUND

The Slovenian healthcare business model (BM) has largely failed to integrate information and communication technologies (ICT) into its operational context, instead maintaining its rigid structure and traditional 'way of doing business'wo managers of public clinics).

RESULTS

Findings present a roadmap for the redefinition of BM elements and the transformation of the Slovenian healthcare BM. It includes the specific reconfiguration of BM actors and their interactions, and the application of advanced ICT solutions, which could facilitate more effective utilisation of healthcare resources and promote an improved delivery of healthcare services and products.

CONCLUSION

The presented development approach and derived conceptual solution could be transferable to other countries with similar socio-economic characteristics and comparable healthcare systems, subject to certain adjustments and inclusion of national specifics.

Cost and technical efficiency of physician practices: a stochastic frontier approach using panel data

This is the first study to use stochastic frontier analysis to estimate both the technical and cost efficiency of physician practices. The analysis is based on panel data from 3,126 physician practices for the years 2006 through 2008. We specified the technical and cost frontiers as translog function, using the one-step approach of Battese and Coelli to detect factors that influence the efficiency of general practitioners and specialists. Variables that were not analyzed previously in this context (e.g., the degree of practice specialization) and a range of control variables such as a patients' case-mix were included in the estimation. Our results suggest that it is important to investigate both technical and cost efficiency, as results may depend on the type of efficiency analyzed. For example, the technical efficiency of group practices was significantly higher than that of solo practices, whereas the results for cost efficiency differed. This may be due to indivisibilities in expensive technical equipment, which can lead to different types of health care services being provided by different practice types (i.e., with group practices using more expensive inputs, leading to higher costs per case despite these practices being technically more efficient). Other practice characteristics such as participation in disease management programs show the same impact throughout both cost and technical efficiency: participation in disease management programs led to an increase in both, technical and cost efficiency, and may also have had positive effects on the quality of care. Future studies should take quality-related issues into account.

Could the patient have been seen by a nurse; a questionnaire based survey of GP and patient views in Danish general practice

Background

Nurses in Denmark have been increasingly involved in general practice care, which may have implications for the role of the general practitioner (GP) and patients’ experience of primary care. The aim of this study was to explore possibilities of doctor-nurse substitution seen from GP and patient perspectives and patient preferences in regard to consultations with a personal GP.

Methods

The study was based on data from a Danish survey on disease patterns in general practice (KOS 2008). Background information on patients and GPs was linked with their responses to whether a nurse could have substituted the GP in consultations and patient-assessed importance of seeing a personal GP. Associations were measured with prevalence rate ratio (PR).

Results

Doctor-nurse substitution was a possibility in 14.8% of consultations according to GPs and in 11.7% according to patients. GP and patient agreed on substitution in 3.5% of consultations (Kappa = 0.164). Follow-up consultations were more often feasible for substitution than new episode according to GPs (adj. PR = 2.06 (1.62-2.62)), but not according to patients (adj. PR = 1.02 (0.64-1.33)). Follow-up consultations were related to high importance of seeing the personal GP (adj. PR = 1.18 (1.05-1.33). For both patients and GPs, consultations with patients with chronic conditions were not significantly associated with nurse substitution. Male and younger patients did more often suggest substitution than women and older patients. For GPs, increasing patient age was associated with relevance of substitution. Patients who found it 'very important’ to see their personal GP were less likely to consider nurse substitution a possibility (adj. PR = 0.57 (0.45-0.71).

Conclusions

GPs and patients found nurse substitution relevant in more than one in ten consultations, although they rarely agreed on which consultations. Follow-up consultations and consultations with older patients were associated with GPs considering nurse substitution appropriate more often. For patients, male and younger patients most often found substitution relevant. High importance of seeing the personal GP may contribute to patient reluctance to nurse substitution, especially for follow-up consultations. The results indicate a need for involving patients’ perspective when altering the future roles of primary health care professionals.

The accuracy of general practitioner workforce projections

BACKGROUND

Health workforce projections are important instruments to prevent imbalances in the health workforce. For both the tenability and further development of these projections, it is important to evaluate the accuracy of workforce projections. In The Netherlands, health workforce projections have been done since 2000 to support health workforce planning. What is the accuracy of the techniques of these Dutch general practitioner workforce projections?

METHODS

We backtested the workforce projection model by comparing the ex-post projected number of general practitioners with the observed number of general practitioners between 1998 and 2011. Averages of historical data were used for all elements except for inflow in training. As the required training inflow is the key result of the workforce planning model, and has actually determined past adjustments of training inflow, the accuracy of the model was backtested using the observed training inflow and not an average of historical data to avoid the interference of past policy decisions. The accuracy of projections with different lengths of projection horizon and base period (on which the projections are based) was tested.

RESULTS

The workforce projection model underestimated the number of active Dutch general practitioners in most years. The mean absolute percentage errors range from 1.9% to 14.9%, with the projections being more accurate in more recent years. Furthermore, projections with a shorter projection horizon have a higher accuracy than those with a longer horizon. Unexpectedly, projections with a shorter base period have a higher accuracy than those with a longer base period.

CONCLUSIONS

According to the results of the present study, forecasting the size of the future workforce did not become more difficult between 1998 and 2011, as we originally expected. Furthermore, the projections with a short projection horizon and a short base period are more accurate than projections with a longer projection horizon and base period. We can carefully conclude that health workforce projections can be made with data based on relatively short base periods, although detailed data are still required to monitor and evaluate the health workforce.