Discounting and clinical decision making: physicians, patients, the general public, and the management of asymptomatic abdominal aortic aneurysms.

Summary, in English

Clinical decisions often entail in intertemporal trade-off. Moreover, they often involve physicians of different specialities. In an experiment dealing with the management of small asymptomatic abdominal aortic aneurysms (a clinically relevant problem) we find that specialists in internal medicine exhibit higher implicit discount rates than vascular surgeons, general practitioners, and actual and prospective patients. Several personal characteristics expected to be directly related to pure time-preference and risk aversion (gender, smoking habits, age, place of employment) have the hypothesised effects. Additionally, financial incentives appear to affect the estimated implicit discount rates of physicians, but are unlikely to have caused the inter-group differences. Differences in discount rates could lead to variations in clinical practice, which may conflict with equality of treatment or equal access to health care. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

• Författare: Sören Höjgård; Ulrika Enemark; Carl Hampus Lyttkens; Anna Lindgren; Thomas Troëng; H Weibull
• Avdelning/ar: Institutionen för hälsovetenskaper; Nationalekonomiska institutionen; Matematisk statistik
• Publiceringsår: 2002
• Språk: Engelska
• Sidor: 355-370
• Publikation/Tidskrift/Serie: Health Economics
• Volym: 11
• Issue: 4
• Länkar: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=12007166&dopt=Abstract; http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/hec.674
• Dokumenttyp: Artikel i tidskrift
• Förlag: John Wiley & Sons Inc.
• Ämne: Health Care Service and Management, Health Policy and Services and Health Economy; Public Health, Global Health, Social Medicine and Epidemiology
• Nyckelord: Aged; Vascular Surgical Procedures: utilization; Time Factors; Models; Quality-Adjusted Life Years; Middle Age; Human; Comparative Study; Aortic Aneurysm; Male; Internal Medicine: statistics & numerical data; Decision Making; Abdominal: surgery; Abdominal: mortality; Family Practice: statistics & numerical data; Abdominal: physiopathology; Physician's Practice Patterns: statistics & numerical data; Statistical; Patient Acceptance of Health Care: statistics & numerical data; Questionnaires; Risk Assessment; Support; Non-U.S. Gov't; Sweden: epidemiology; Survival Analysis
• Status: Published
• ISBN/ISSN/Övrigt: ISSN: 1099-1050