Samuel Kembou Nzale
IBD Amphi
AMU - AMSE
5-9 boulevard Maurice Bourdet
13001 Marseille
Edward Levavasseur: edward.levavasseur[at]univ-amu.fr
Lara Vivian: lara.vivian[at]univ-amu.fr
One of the main mechanism used to regulate physicians’ behaviors is their payment options. It is well established that payment parameters carry different incentive properties. In this paper, we aim to go a step further in the literature on physicians’ payments by introducing medical innovation in physicians’ practice. The introduction of medical innovation in this relationship allows to consider recent progresses in genomics that lead to a more “personalized medicine”. Our research allows to consider incentives in a trial-and-error medicine where decision is mainly taken based on a general set of information versus incentives in personalized medicine where more precise information is available to the physician. To combine physicians’ behaviors together with medical innovation and payment mechanisms, we design a laboratory experiment. In our experiment, subjects act as physicians in a real effort game. Three treatments corresponding to payment schemes are considered: (i) payment for performance; (ii) fee-for-service and (iii) capitation. For each treatment, we vary the medical context proposed to each physician: first without medical innovation; second with medical innovation and third with a choice between one of the two preceding medical contexts. We randomize the order of the three treatments and we keep fixed for each treatment the medical context. Each subject is treated with 2 different payment systems. Our results will mainly focus on (I) the impact of medical innovation and physicians’ payments on quantity and quality of care and (II) the physician's decision to have or not the medical context.