Risk and the Economics of Health
A special issue of Risks (ISSN 2227-9091).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 May 2014) | Viewed by 155
Special Issue Editors
Interests: health economics; risk adjustment; quality of care; long term care
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Risk permeates every aspect of health care markets and hence affects behavior of providers, consumers (patients and their agents), and payers (insurers, employers and governments). Arrow, in his seminal 1963 article, was the first to address these issues. Since then, medical care has advanced, health care services, markets, and insurance products have become more complex, but risk continues to be a major factor that shapes all.Risks in health care markets are of several types. There is risk arising due to the inherent uncertainty in the onset of disease and its progression; there is risk due to imperfect diagnostic technologies; there is risk due to incomplete or lack of information about efficacy and effectiveness of the majority of treatments and procedures; there is the risk of new information becoming available (reclassification of insurance category risk), and then there is the more selective risks that only some market participants face because of asymmetric information (e.g., selection in insurance markets or consumers’ inability to ascertain providers’ quality). All risk types lead to departures from perfectly competitive and efficient markets.
Approaches to addressing these market failures vary. They include various cost and risk sharing arrangements that change the incentives that consumers, providers, and insurers face. They also include measurement and statistical methods to model and adjust for patient heterogeneity. Such risk adjustment methods are designed to lower risk and are built into payment designs, insurance rates, and quality measures.
Our intent with this special issue is to offer a forum for the examination of the impact of risk on the behavior of consumers, providers and insurers, and ultimately the implications for the efficiency of the health care system. We are calling for high quality papers discussing these issues, both from theoretical and empirical perspectives. We welcome contributions addressing topics such as, but not limited to:
• Econometric and statistical approaches to risk adjustment (e.g., in quality measures, payment rates, insurance premiums);
• The impact of different methods of risk adjustment or degree of adjustment in insurance prices on behavior of insurers and consumers;
• The impact of different methods of risk adjustment or degree of adjustment in quality measurement on behavior of providers, regulators, and consumers;
• Approaches to risk sharing and their impact on utilization, access, and quality;
• The cost-effectiveness of risk measurement and risk adjustment.
Prof. Dr. Dana B. Mukamel
Prof. Dr. Fred Schroyen
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Risks is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- risk-taking
- insurance
- health economics
