Joaquim Vidiella is an economist working at the University of Oxford as a Research Fellow at the Centre for Health Service Economics and Organisation, within the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences. His research interests lie in applied micro-econometrics, health economics, labour economics, and public health. Currently, his research focuses on the study of provider behavior in medical settings. Joaquim holds a PhD in Economics from the Erasmus School of Economics and the Tinbergen Institute.

Abstract:

Deprivation payments provide additional per-patient fees to health professionals serving patients in socioeconomically deprived areas. While these payments aim to financially compensate for higher workloads in these deprived areas, an unanswered question is whether they help close health gaps between deprived and non-deprived areas. We evaluate the effectiveness of this policy instrument by assessing the adoption of deprivation payments among Dutch midwives. Exploiting a discontinuity in pay based on regional deprivation scores, we show that these payments successfully closed the gap in birth outcomes between deprived and non-deprived areas. An inspection of the mechanisms behind our findings confirms that these gains were driven by the better provision of prenatal care to mothers with an increased risk of complications during pregnancy and adverse birth outcomes and not by two other potential drivers: (1) mothers did not relocate to deprived areas to obtain care from practices receiving higher remuneration, and (2) geographical movement of midwives switching practices can at most account for a small part of the treatment effects.

To attend the seminar online, you can access the following link.