Imperfect Agency and the Regulation of Hospitals

This article addresses the combined problem of imperfect agency and asymmetric information in the regulation of hospitals by modeling the physician as a utility maximizer with both the utility of patients and profit of the hospital as arguments in his or her utility function. The article concludes that optimal regulation of hospitals is based on three important factors: the doctor's marginal rate of substitution between profit of the hospital and utility of the patients, moral hazard in the relationship between the regulator and the hospital, and adverse selection in the same relation.