Home sweet home: GPs' response to an increase in the fee size for home visits.

Abstract

In many health care systems GPs receive fees for their services. Policymakers may use the size of these fees to try to incentivise GPs to provide more care. However, evidence is mixed on whether and how GPs respond to an increase in the fee size. This study investigates how GPs respond to an average increase of 150% in the fee for a high-effort and infrequent service such as a home visit due to patients' illness. We consider Danish GPs' provision of these visits to enlisted patients living outside of nursing homes. Using linear regressions with general practice fixed effects and a rich number of control variables, we estimate the association between GPs' provision of these home visits and the fee rise. On average, we find no association between the fee rise and GPs' provision of home visits. However, we find that GPs who previously provided the fewest home visits to eligible patients increase their provision by 13% after the fee rise compared to other GPs. This increase in visits is driven by more patients receiving multiple visits after the fee rise. We conclude that a fee rise may not yield a strong response in GPs' provision of high-effort and infrequent services such as home visits.