The economic value of caring

Health Care Manage Rev. 1998 Fall;23(4):43-53. doi: 10.1097/00004010-199810000-00004.

Abstract

A heuristic method for monetizing effects of caring is presented. Practitioners' caring behaviors have economic value to health care organizations through effects on patient satisfaction, physiology, self-disclosure, and self-esteem, and subsequent use of medications, laboratory tests, and procedures. These effects are monetized as revenues generated, costs avoided, costs reduced, and externalities.

MeSH terms

  • Caregivers / economics*
  • Cost of Illness*
  • Cost-Benefit Analysis
  • Empathy
  • Humans
  • Models, Economic
  • Organizational Culture
  • Physician-Patient Relations*
  • Physicians / economics