Health Economics Efficiency, Quality, and Equity

Subjects:

• Health/Medicine » Health Care Administration & Policy
• Economics » Econometrics

Reviews:

• Eastaugh is a significant contributor to the health economics literature and the recipient of the American College of Health Care Executives Edgar Hayhow Award. He provides an excellent summary of applied economic research emphasizing new micro concerns of health quality, cost control, and efficiency in their relationship to equity. New forms of completion (managed care) are well covered. Discussion of finance (including economics of health insurance) is minimal; this topic will be covered in the author's forthcoming companion volume, Health Care Finance. . . . Also, Eastaugh clearly emphasizes supply and providers over demand (theory of consumer demand and determinants of demand). With this emphasis, there is excellent coverage of physician behavior, access to health care, and the uninsured. A nice section on cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness is included. Overall, in its scope, this is the best text on health economics on the market. It is comprehensive yet readable at most levels. . . .
  —Choice
• There are relatively few books that attempt to draw together all the available information into a single volume comprehensible to physicians, hospital managers, and other students of health policy. Health Economics fills that void. . . . The book is an excellent introduction to the major issues affecting the health care sector today, and students can read sections at a time, where they will be introduced to some of the most important research in the fields of health services research and public policy.
  —Academic Medicine

Table of Contents:

• Cost Behavior and Cost Functions
• Cost Inflation: Overtilled and Undertilled Fields
• Cost Functions and Production Functions
• Economic Models and Physician Behavior
• Economic Models of Physician and Hospital Behavior
• Physician Payment Options for the 1990s
• Cost Sharing, Managed Care, and Competition Health Plans
• Competition Health Plans: Managed Care and the Use of Case Managers
• Employers, Cost Sharing, and Cost Containment
• Equity, Access, and the Urban Medical Center
• Access and the Uninsured
• The Cost of Teaching Hospitals
• Consumer Education, Service Quality, and Health Manpower
• Quality Measurement, Consumer Information, and Value Shopping
• Health Manpower Policies, Physician Extenders, and Nursing Education
• Efficiency, Effectiveness, and Cost-Benefit
• Cost-effectiveness and Cost-benefit Analysis
• The Role of Technology Assessment
• Benefit Evaluation: The Value of Life and Limb
• Future Policy Trends
• Capitation, Consolidation, and Universal Entitlement