Caroline Steigenberger, Andrea M Leiter, Uwe Siebert, Claudia Schusterschitz, Magdalena Flatscher-Thoeni
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引用次数: 0
Abstract
Home hospice services contribute to dying in dignity by addressing medical and social needs at the end of life. The respective monetary valuation in a sense of willingness to pay is not available yet. We aim to quantify the benefits of home hospice services to society using society's monetary valuation and examine the influence of prior knowledge and experience on willingness to pay for home hospice services. A nationwide cross-sectional contingent valuation study was conducted in Austria. We analyzed the impact of the determinants of interest on having a positive willingness to pay for home hospice services via multivariate Probit regression. Stated willingness to pay was analyzed using interval regression. Variable selection of potential influence factors and confounders was based on the literature. The variables of interest, prior knowledge of and experience with home hospice services, were represented by twelve related variables. We included 1262 respondents in the analysis. The two-part regression analysis showed a statistically significant positive impact on the probability of having a positive willingness to pay by prior knowledge of home hospice services, prior donations, and the wish of not dying alone. Prior donations also increase the level of willingness to pay. The probability of a positive willingness to pay was statistically significantly lower for respondents that stated to have experienced the death of more than ten close persons and perceived spending time with dying persons as burden than their respective counterparts. Our study provides evidence that information campaigns to increase the recognition and awareness of existing home hospice services could increase their perceived value in society.
期刊介绍:
The focus of the International Journal of Health Economics and Management is on health care systems and on the behavior of consumers, patients, and providers of such services. The links among management, public policy, payment, and performance are core topics of the relaunched journal. The demand for health care and its cost remain central concerns. Even as medical innovation allows providers to improve the lives of their patients, questions remain about how to efficiently deliver health care services, how to pay for it, and who should pay for it. These are central questions facing innovators, providers, and payers in the public and private sectors. One key to answering these questions is to understand how people choose among alternative arrangements, either in markets or through the political process. The choices made by healthcare managers concerning the organization and production of that care are also crucial. There is an important connection between the management of a health care system and its economic performance. The primary audience for this journal will be health economists and researchers in health management, along with the larger group of health services researchers. In addition, research and policy analysis reported in the journal should be of interest to health care providers, managers and policymakers, who need to know about the pressures facing insurers and governments, with consequences for regulation and mandates. The editors of the journal encourage submissions that analyze the behavior and interaction of the actors in health care, viz. consumers, providers, insurers, and governments. Preference will be given to contributions that combine theoretical with empirical work, evaluate conflicting findings, present new information, or compare experiences between countries and jurisdictions. In addition to conventional research articles, the journal will include specific subsections for shorter concise research findings and cont ributions to management and policy that provide important descriptive data or arguments about what policies follow from research findings. The composition of the editorial board is designed to cover the range of interest among economics and management researchers.Officially cited as: Int J Health Econ ManagFrom 2001 to 2014 the journal was published as International Journal of Health Care Finance and Economics. (Articles published in Vol. 1-14 officially cited as: Int J Health Care Finance Econ)