Volume 30, Number 4 (Fall) 1995
Propper, Carol. 1995. "The Disutility of Time Spent on the United Kingdom's National Health Service Waiting Lists." Journal of Human Resources 30(4):677-700.
Waiting lists are central to the allocation of medical care in the British National Health Service. But there have been few attempts to cost these lists. This paper argues that these lists have a cost to consumers. This cost cannot be estimated from the observed actions of demanders of care. A method of contingent valuation is proposed and used as a means of obtaining data to derive an estimate of this cost. The paper presents the methodology and derives a set of estimates of the disutility of time spent on a waiting list for nonurgent treatment.
Carol Propper is a professor of economics in the Department of economics and SPS, University of Bristol, United Kingdom. This paper has benefited from the helpful comments of two referees. The author takes responsibility for any remaining errors. Financial support was provided in part by the Health promotion research Trust. The data used in this article can be obtained beginning in June 1996 through June 1999 from the author: Department of Economics, University of Bristol, 8 Woodland Road, Bristol BS8 1TH, UK.
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