Heterogeneity and Share Contracting in Medical Group Practices

This paper offers an empirical analysis of the relationship between income sharing rules and physician heterogeneity in medical group practices.The economies to group formation associated with risk–sharing, mutual monitoring,and internal referral are served by sharing at least a portion of group income equally. Sharing group income equally is problematic, however, when group members differ in their contribution to group income. Member contributions to group income may differ because of differences in ability, effort, or the price of services across specialty fields. The analysis below is addressed to the question of how income sharing rules in physician groups are affected by variation in member contributions. The analysis finds evidence that heterogeneity in member contributions to group income limits the use of equal income sharing rules in multispecialty groups relative to single specialty groups, and large groups relative to small groups. Nevertheless, 65% of all groups in the survey share at least a pn of group income equally, which broadly suggests that the joint surplus enhancement from risk sharing, mutual monitoring, and internal referral are sufficient to overcome the incentive problems of such rules     

Employer Penalties for Failure to Provide Individual Employee Notification Under the Family and Medical Leave Act: “Clarifications” Following Ragsdale v. Wolverine Worldwide, Inc.

This article examines the Supreme Court's ruling in Ragsdale v. Wolverine Worldwide, Inc. (2002) and considers its implications for employer and employee rights and responsibilities relative to implementing the FMLA policies. We provide an overview of the pre-decision regulatory environment including the general leave provisions of the FMLA and DOL's regulations requiring employer notification of leave designated as FMLA leave. We also identify those provisions that the decision did not alter and provide a broader consideration of the issues and implication of this decision for employers and employees.     

The main paths of medical tourism: From transplantation to beautification

Medical tourism, combining the very polarized purposes of pleasurable travel and potentially stressful health care services, is an emergent and growing business worldwide. Medical tourism patients are willing to travel abroad to seek better quality, lower cost, domestically unavailable, no wait-time destinations for non-emergency medical care. There are numerous related studies in the academic literature that are substantiated with multidisciplinary and diverse backgrounds. This study uses the main path analysis, a unique quantitative and citation-based approach, to analyze the significant development trajectories, important literature, and recent active research areas in medical tourism. We find that there are two distinctive development paths: one path focuses more on the evolution of medical tourism, the motivation factors, marketing strategies, and economic analysis; the other path emphasizes organ transplant and related issues. These two paths eventually merge to a common node in the citation network, which foretells transplantation to beautification as the future research direction trend.     

Stage-gate process for life sciences and medical innovation investment

Life science innovation has led to significant improvements in clinical outcomes and has been a source of financial growth for individuals and institutions capable of performing appropriate investments in this sector. Several groups have developed methodologies to assist medical technology innovators in the design and development activities. Unfortunately, these tools have not aided the general investment community to profit from these enterprises. This situation has contributed to a general reduction in risk capital directed towards life sciences compared to other industries. We review the current investment practices in the life science sector and present a comprehensive stage-gate model that aims to captures this investment process. An analysis of best practices and in-depth interviews with 68 life sciences investors and entrepreneurs worldwide are used to support such model. A single case-control study comparing life science investment execution within two similar investment firms was conducted to evaluate feasibility in the implementation of these practices. The stage-gate model includes (I) General vision and investment strategy definition; (II) Venture search, screening and rapid pre-evaluation; (III) Due diligence and negotiation of terms; (IV) Portfolio management, evaluation, and exit. The difference in execution of investment and results from a post-performance Root Cause Analysis were consistent with a reduction in perceived risk from the case company trained with the proposed model compared to the control. This suggests that our developed model and process may be useful in encouraging life sciences investment via evidence-based evaluations.     

Chinese medical tourists – Their perceptions of Taiwan

This study explores the motivations and perceptions of Chinese medical tourists visiting Taiwan regarding the quality of tourism packages and the medical services consumed. Knowing the factors that motivate medical tourists and their quality demands for tourism operators and medical institutions is important for medical tourism planners to develop and organize services that serve their customers. Particularly, findings can help tourism operators plan customized itineraries and healthcare services, including software and hardware facilities, for Chinese tourists.     

Babymoon tourism between emotional well-being service for medical tourism and niche tourism. Development and awareness on Romanian educated women

Health tourism and wellness tourism have become "temptations" with many world markets looking to take advantage of their growing popularity. Babymoon tourism is one of the hottest trends in travel today. The aim of this study is to fill a gap in the research on babymoon tourism by measuring the awareness of, and interest in, this trend in Romania through convenient sampling. The results show that 28% of respondents know "babymoon", but they agree on its positive impact. Our research results emphasize the necessity of promoting babymoons due to the actual trend and because the holiday market has been focused on well-being and promoting the concept of hedonic well-being. Additionally, to promote Romania as a babymoon destination, we must consider that today's consumers are prosumers seeking experiences and emotional wellbeing. Promoting babymoons for emotional well-being can result in two managerial outcomes for Romania: brand identification and intention to revisit.     

数字化医疗信息安全管理机制研究

目前,我国在医疗信息安全保障建设方面严重滞后,信息安全工作的战略统筹和综合协调不够,缺乏体系化的安全策略研究以及针对数字化医疗业务特点的管理机制研究。为了实现安全可信的医疗信息发展环境,笔者针对现有医疗信息系统中各个需要实施安全保护的目标,给出了在推动医疗信息安全保障体系建设方面应涉及的各项安全问题及管理机制,旨在构建一个全面涵盖了信息技术、组织策略、法律意识的整体性治理方案。     

#br# 药交所试点背景下人均医疗费用的影响因素研究

本文采用固定效应模型建立人均医疗费用影响因素的一般模型，并通过引入药交所虚拟变量和考察医生收入的中介效应进一步阐释该模型。研究结果表明，诱导需求与医院规模对人均医疗费用均有显著影响；药交所政策降低了人均医疗费用，但医生收入中介效应的存在使得部分医疗资源被浪费。本文提出了控制人均医疗费用的政策建议：增加医院与卫生院的数量；合理调整医务工作者内部结构；倡导医生自由执业并提供保障；合理增加医生收入。     

Quality,Value? – Insights into Medical Tourists’ Attitudes and Behaviors

The research investigates the factors influencing medical tourists’ attitudes and behaviors. The factors examined include hospital service and customer perceived value. The study was undertaken in a major hospital located in a South-East Asian country. The sample includes foreign patients who have received various medical treatments in the hospital. The findings indicate that medical tourists are value oriented customers as their value perception has the strongest direct effect on their behaviors, followed by their attitudes towards the hospital. Hospital service appears to have a substantial direct effect on perceived value and medical tourist satisfaction, and also exerts an indirect effect on medical tourist behaviors. The research highlights the prominent role of perceived value, and pinpoints the most effective avenues for healthcare providers in allocating resources to improve hospital performance from the perspective of medical tourists.     

The medical tourism index: Scale development and validation

Medical tourism is an estimated $100 billion dollar industry. Despite the increasing number of people, companies and countries involved in medical tourism, we know very little about the key drivers and how countries are perceived as medical tourism destinations. The purpose of this paper is to present the Medical Tourism Index, a new type of country-based performance measure to assess the attractiveness of a country as a medical tourist destination. We followed a rigorous multi-steps scale development procedure by using four empirical studies based on 4995 respondents. The MTI is a multidimensional construct with 4 dimensions (country, tourism, medical costs, medical facility and services) with 34 underlying items. Our results show the MTI allows to measure meaningful differences between countries, not only on an aggregated level but also on each sub-indexes. It provides a useful tool for the various stakeholders to measure and manage their medical tourism destination brand.