Changes to reimbursement levels and reimbursement methodology have become increasingly common as public health insurance programs seek to slow the rate of cost growth. Despite the fact that Medicaid is a major public health insurance program, little is known about how hospitals respond to price cuts by Medicaid. On the other hand, existing research on hospital response to a commonly used paymen...

BACKGROUND In a bundled payment system, a single payment covers all costs associated with a single episode of care. Spine surgery may be well suited for bundled payments because of clearly defined episodes of care, but the impact on current practice has not been studied. We sought to examine how a theoretical bundled payment strategy with financial disincentives to resource utilization would im...

Mobile operators and mobile service providers like SMS aggregators and ticket providers have until now been the main actors in the provisioning of SMS tickets for public transportation services. The consumers have been charged for SMS payments using the mobile phone bill. Due to financial regulation (EU directive) mobile operators are no longer allowed to handle payments and transactions for no...

Mobile off-line payment enables purchase over the counter even in the absence of reliable network connections. Popular solutions proposed by leading payment service providers (e.g., Google, Amazon, Samsung, Apple) rely on direct communication between the payer’s device and the POS system, through Near-Field Communication (NFC), Magnetic Secure Transaction (MST), audio and QR code. Although pre-...

While the implications of payment mechanisms for provider behaviour and cost have been amply explored in industrialized countries, there is little empirical evidence from developing countries. This study exploits the opportunities created by a pilot study of micro health insurance with capitation in Rwanda to address this issue. Using cross-sectional data collected in 52 health centres, the pap...

In this paper, we have considered an economic order quantity model for deteriorating items with two-level trade credit policy in which a delay in payment is offered by a supplier to a retailer and also an another delay in payment is offered by the retailer to his/her all customers. Here, it is proposed that the demand function is dependent on the length of the customer's credit period and also ...

OBJECTIVES Prior research suggests that authorized generic drugs increase competition and decrease prices, but little empirical evidence supports this conclusion. This study evaluated the impact of authorized generic marketing on brand and generic prices. DESIGN Longitudinal analysis of the household component of the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey. SETTING Interview panels over 12 years, ...

BACKGROUND This study aimed to evaluate the impact of diagnosis-related group (DRG) payments on health-care providers' behavior and the potential best course of action to make a profit under a DRG payment mechanism. METHODS This is a natural experiment study with a tertiary hospital-based dataset. Under a consecutive three-period (3 years) or 12-period (12 seasons) design, length of stay, med...

The primary mining sector portrays advantaged outcomes for the environmental and financial indicators, but below average performance for the social indicators of employment generation, income and government revenue. The export propensity indicator is four times the average reflecting the industry’s contribution to helping improve the international trade balance. The lower than average contribut...