The WELLCARE project: How does physicians’ wellbeing impact care and policy responses?
Name of applicant
Anne Sophie Oxholm
Title
Associate Professor
Institution
University of Southern Denmark
Amount
DKK 4,291,478
Year
2022
Type of grant
Semper Ardens: Accelerate
What?
Individuals’ wellbeing is shown to be essential for their performance, productivity, and persistence. However, little is known about this relationship in a healthcare setting. The WELLCARE project aims to uncover the extent to which physicians’ wellbeing affect their provision of healthcare. More specifically, the project uncovers how variations in physicians’ wellbeing – both within practices and over time – explains their provision of care. The project also aims to assess the importance of physicians’ wellbeing for their responses to policies that seek to improve quality of care. The project will thereby inform the scientific community, policymakers, and practitioners of the importance of physicians’ wellbeing for delivery of healthcare and responses to policies.
Why?
Many healthcare systems are currently challenged by rising demands for care, staff shortages, and tightening budgets. Out of concern for the quality of care, policymakers introduce schemes that aim to incentivise physicians to deliver high-quality care. Physicians do not always respond as intended to these schemes and this could be related to their wellbeing. However, little is known about the extent to which physicians’ wellbeing affects their treatment behaviour and policy responses. Evidence on the importance of physicians’ wellbeing may help improve the design of future incentive schemes and thereby the delivery of healthcare.
How?
The research project benefits from access to unique and rich panel data on Danish general practitioners’ (GPs’) wellbeing and provision of care. Using this data as well as state-of-the-art empirical methods, we will uncover the extent to which physicians’ wellbeing affect their provision of healthcare and policy responses. The project consists of two distinct work packages. The first work package uncovers the relationship between several measures of GPs’ wellbeing and provision of care. The second work package exploits natural experiments with incentive schemes targeted GPs’ quality of care to identify whether GPs’ wellbeing impacts their responses to these schemes.