Given that rising health care expenditure is increasingly perceived by the public eye as a burden to society, the center for health economics research CINCH – competent in competition + health is dedicated to the study of a prospective solution: competition in health care. More and more, fostering competition among actors in the health care system is considered to be a means of integrating market-based steering mechanisms and thus improving the system’s efficiency and effectiveness.

CINCH studies issues of competition in health care within two junior research groups and several research projects. The junior research group EACH (Empirical Analysis of Competition in Health Care Markets) uses advanced econometric techniques to analyze competition in health care, with a particular focus on regional competition among providers and competition among payers. The junior research group HCM / Health Care Markets uses experimental economic methods to study preferences and behavior among suppliers and demanders in health care markets. Three additional projects complement the research groups: One on improving the risk adjustment mechanism among sickness funds, based at the Chair of Health Care Management of Jürgen Wasem; one on pay-for-performance for physicians at Jeannette Brosig-Koch’s Chair of Quantitative Economic Policy (both at Duisburg-Essen University); and one on inpatient long-term care based at the Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE).