Sloan, Frank, Janet Mitchell, and Jerry Cromwell. 1978. "Physician Participation in State Medicaid Programs." Journal of Human Resources 13(S):211-245.

Medicaid requires that physicians who accept Medicaid reimbursement for treating a patient agree to accept its payment as payment in full. Policy instruments under Medicaid's control are both levels of reimbursement and various administrative burdens imposed on physicians by the program. A model depicting the physician's participation decision is developed, and predictions from the comparative statics analysis are discussed. Data came from a 1975-76 survey of fee-for-service physicians. The results indicate that high fee schedules and low administrative burdens are ways to stimulate physician involvement with Medicaid patients. Results on the Medicaid policy instruments and other explanatory variables on the whole lend support to the model of physician behavior proposed earlier in the paper.

The authors are, respectively, Professor of Economics, Vanderbilt University; Assistant Research Professor of Medicine, Boston University; and Senior Economist, Policy Analysis, Inc. This study was supported by Contract #600-75-0212 between the Social Security Administration, DHEW, and Abt Associates, Inc. The views and opinions expressed in this article are the authors'. No endorsement by the Social Security Administration or DHEW is intended or should be inferred. Material for this article has been drawn from Frank Sloan, Jerry Cromwell, and Janet Mitchell, Private Physicians and Public Programs (Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath and Co., 1978). Some theoretical and empirical results are presented here for the first time. We are grateful to participants in the NBER Conference on The Economics of Physician and Patient Behavior for useful comments on an earlier version.

© 2003 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System

US ISSN 0022-166X

Return to JHR Home Page