Sunday, January 20, 2008

ARTICLE TITLE :
Patients seek private doctors for reputation, not price
By Judith Tan

As you all already know the government has asked the private doctors to let their charges be known to the public and this article is regarding that ! pretty short article

Link : http://www.straitstimes.com/Latest%2BNews/Singapore/STIStory_198186.html

THE SUMMARY (sort of) :

Given the gap in data, the ministry announced on Thursday that it would push through legislation to make it mandatory for the private hospital to make public their bill sizes.
While private doctors agree that patients should be given the knowledge to make informed choices when it comes to picking a doctor, they argue that price is not the only thing they look for.'Bill size data should never be the only means for patients to consider. Patients tend to look specific treatments and the competence of the specialist in delivering it,' he said. .......clinical outcome of different conditions or procedures should be published in tandem with hospital bill sizes. Five years ago, MOH moved to make public the size of hospital bills - which triggered almost immediate price cuts at public hospitals that had higher prices than others.

ANALYSIS :

this report shows opportunity cost and the demand supply pattern and a consumer who has to make rationale decisions

Decision making is exhibited when the consumer(patient) decides which doctor to go to analysin details such as the treatment quality, the cost of the treatment(whether there are any other clinics that offer services at a better rate).

Opportunity cost is shown when the patient decides to forgo consumption of another hospital's service that may be of same standard or if the patient decides to go to a hospital due to other factors such as accessibility reputation conditioning of hospital as well

Demand supply is shown. in this case if ceteris paribus other than demand then the price that the hospitals show is what the consumers would follow and if the hospitals push their prices down the demand for that service would go up enabling a win win situation for both the parties consumer surplus and profits for the hospital !!!

Done By : C.Vidhya

Labels: Econs

10:16 PM