Week 2 – Assignment: Investigating the Demand for Health Care
This week, in your role as the Health Economics intern working with the Health Economics and Statistics team, you will develop a profile of newly enrolled health plan members, acquired through the purchase of an outpatient clinic HEALTH!. More needs to be known about this newly acquired population so that services offered reflect their demand profiles. Using the information in this week’s assignment, the chapters in the assigned text, and assigned readings, demonstrate how the demand equation can be used as a decision-making tool to create population profiles used to develop health services available in the new clinic.
Then, prepare this profile as follows:
· Provide a general introduction to the topic explaining the demand for health care.
· Use the demand equation and a graph to illustrate and explain how each of the inputs to demand can affect seeking care.
· Show how individual demand curves can be used to derive a market demand curve.
· Describe price elasticity of demand and use a graph to demonstrate which services are likely to be more price elastic than others.
· Calculate the elasticity of demand for physician visits using exercise # 6 in Hicks (p. 68). Show your calculations and explain the impact of the change.
· Provide a conclusion summarizing your presentation to your Health Economics and Statistics Department.
· Provide one example from Becker’s Hospital Review to demonstrate a current use of demand, the elasticity of demand, and income elasticity of demand.
Length: 6-10 pages, excluding the title and reference pages “. By completing this assignment, you will be developing your competency in Analytical Thinking and Financial Skills.