Diffusion of medical technology:The role of financing

Financing systems are commonly expected to significantly affect provider behaviour, including the adoption of new medical technologies. So far, however, the relationship between payment systems and innovation diffusion for specific technologies has been the subject of remarkably little empirical work. The purpose of this paper is thus to assess the impact of financing mechanisms for specific new medical devices and correlated procedures on their diffusion. The analysis is carried out in the Italian inpatient cardiovascular area and applied to drug eluting stents. To this end, a panel data analysis based on observational data was conducted at the service provider level. Primary data on stenting implants in the Italian National Health Service were retrieved from the database of the Italian society of invasive cardiology in the period 2001 to 2007. Results of the study will ultimately contribute to isolate the real effect of public payment mechanisms on the activity of providers with regards to the use of medical technology innovations.