BACKGROUND Informal payments in the health sector of many developing countries are considered as a major impediment to health care reforms. Informal payments are a form of systemic fraud and have adverse effects on the performance of the health system. In this study, the frequency and extent of informal payments as well as the determinants of these payments were investigated in general hospital...

In a pervasive but controversial practice, drug firms frequently make monetary or in-kind payments to medical providers. Critics are concerned that drug firms are distorting prescribing behavior away from the best interests of patients, while defenders of the practice claim that payments arise from the need to educate providers about changing drug technologies. Using two different identificatio...

BACKGROUND The Department of Health introduced a new deprivation payments system for general practitioners (GPs) on 1 April 1999. Following a three-year phasing-in process, registered patients will attract deprivation payments based on the underprivileged area (UPA) score of their enumeration district (ED) of residence, rather than their electoral ward, changing the pattern and distribution of ...

Prior studies have found that subjects prefer an improving sequence of income over a constant sequence, even if the constant sequence offers a larger present-discounted value. However, little is known about how these preferences vary with the size of the wage payments. In each of four studies, we find a positive relationship between the preference for increasing payments and the size of the pay...

A better understanding of high-cost kidney transplant patients would be useful for informing value-based purchasing strategies by payers. This retrospective cohort study was based on the Medicare Provider Analysis and Review (MEDPAR) files from 2003 to 2006. The focus of this analysis was high-cost kidney transplant patients (patients that qualified for Medicare outlier payments and 30-day read...

arge-value payments systems, used by banks to settle financial and commercial transactions, play a key role in the financial system. The importance of these payments systems can be illustrated by the large amounts they settle. Every year in the United States, the systems process value equal to approximately 100 times GDP. Innovations in the design of large-value payments systems have led to man...

BACKGROUND The purpose of this study was to determine the rate and type of inconsistencies between disclosures self-reported by physicians at a major academic meeting in the United States and industry-reported disclosures in the Open Payments database for a concordant time period. METHODS Disclosures for every first and last author from the United States with a medical degree of a podium or p...

BACKGROUND Informal payments to health care providers have been reported in many African, Asian and European countries. This study aimed to investigate different aspects of these payments that are also known as under-the-table payments in Iran. METHODS This is an in-depth interview-based qualitative study conducted on 12 purposively chosen clinical specialists. The interviewees answered 9 que...

From the early days of automated card sorting to the more recent times of the Internet and check imaging, payments and payments processing have continually embraced new technology. At the same time, the industry has been shaped by its share of entry and exit, through startups, mergers, and the reorganization of businesses seeking the proper scope of horizontal and vertical integration. Many of ...

OBJECTIVE To identify payments and changes in payments for glaucoma surgical procedures among Medicare beneficiaries in the United States and to evaluate trends in costs based on the types of procedures being performed. DESIGN Retrospective analysis using 1997 through 2006 Part B Medicare Beneficiary Encrypted Files. The annual number of claims and payments for glaucoma surgical procedures we...