Transfer prices and innovation in public healthcare: Costing and clinical choices in the NHS

Guven-Uslu, Pinar ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3935-8280 and Seal, Will (2019) Transfer prices and innovation in public healthcare: Costing and clinical choices in the NHS. Financial Accountability and Management, 35 (3). pp. 258-274. ISSN 0267-4424

[thumbnail of Accepted manuscript]
Preview
PDF (Accepted manuscript) - Accepted Version
Download (811kB) | Preview

Abstract

The establishment of an internal market for clinical services in a publically funded National Health Service (NHS) requires a process for setting transfer prices. Given the values and logics of actors in a public healthcare system, attempts to determine an “optimal” price for specific treatments as prescribed by well-known transfer pricing texts, are likely to be inappropriate. Rejecting a reductionist model of Economic Man, the study adopted a richer perspective on actor reality through a pragmatic constructivist (PC) methodology. The PC methodology was used to interpret data drawn from a case study of a specialist healthcare centre of English NHS. The case study revealed different realities constructed by clinical and managerial actors. Clinical actors in the study were willing to spread a technological innovation but were not being supported by managers whose reality was influenced by centrally set tariff prices which favoured traditional high cost procedures rather than less costly technical innovations. Characterising the different realities as the “pragmatic truth” of managers and the “proactive truth” of clinicians, the challenge was to bring these together for a fully integrated and coherent solution. This challenge required avoiding a top-down “command and control” model of governance and greater flexibility for transfer pricing and incentives. More generally, the study supports alternative institutional mechanisms that can routinely promote the spread of new technological innovations which are not only clinically superior but, as this case illustrates, are sometimes cheaper than the current procedures.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: nhs,healthcare,innovation,performance management,transfer pricing,business, management and accounting(all),economics, econometrics and finance(all) ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/1400
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Social Sciences > Norwich Business School
UEA Research Groups: Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Accounting & Quantitative Methods
Related URLs:
Depositing User: LivePure Connector
Date Deposited: 20 Jul 2018 16:31
Last Modified: 22 Oct 2022 03:57
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/67746
DOI: 10.1111/faam.12197

Downloads

Downloads per month over past year

Actions (login required)

View Item View Item