Healthcare information exchange: A game-theoretic analysis
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abstract
In the last few years, the U.S. government has been aggressively promoting the establishment of regional healthcare information exchanges (HIEs). HIEs facilitate electronic health information exchange among healthcare providers (HPs). In order to incentivize HIE providers (HIEPs) and HPs, federal government and other parties provide funds to HIEPs and participating HPs. Moreover, HPs pay fees that are determined by the HIEPs in order to join these networks. Using a game-theoretic approach, we analyze two settings in this domain. In the first one, we derive the conditions in order for the HPs to join a newly established HIE. Since the well-established HIEs also offer other value added services, in the second setting, we study the conditions for the HPs to stay in these networks and derive the equilibrium service levels. In this case, the HIE maximizes its profits considering the cost of different services and deciding on their prices. The analysis of the second model also reveals the conditions to sustainably increase the network size. In addition, we present some interesting insights that would be useful for both HIEPs and HPs.