Horodnic, A.V., Williams, C.C. orcid.org/0000-0002-3610-1933 and Drugă, R.I. (2022) The companion pandemic to COVID-19: the use of informal practices to access public healthcare services in the European Union. International Journal of Public Health, 67. 1604405. ISSN 1661-8556
Abstract
Objectives: The objective of this paper is to evaluate the use of informal payments and personal connections to gain preferential access to public health services during the COVID-19 pandemic and to propose effective policy measures for tackling this phenomenon.
Methods: Using data from 25,744 patients in the European Union, six different scenarios are analyzed in relation to making informal payments and/or relying on personal connections to access public healthcare services. To evaluate the propensity to engage in informal practices in healthcare, probit regressions with sample selection and predicted probabilities are used. Robustness checks are also performed to test the reliability of the findings.
Results: For each scenario, a statistically significant association is revealed between the propensity to make informal payments and/or rely on personal connections and the asymmetry between the formal rules and the patients’ personal norms and trust in public authorities.
Conclusion: To tackle informal practices in healthcare, policy measures are required to reduce the asymmetry between the formal rules and personal norms by raising trust in public authorities.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2022 Horodnic, Williams and Drugă. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
Keywords: | COVID-19; informal payments; personal connections; healthcare access; asymmetry formal-informal institutions; , trust in authorities |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Management School (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 07 Nov 2022 12:46 |
Last Modified: | 07 Nov 2022 12:46 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Frontiers Media SA |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.3389/ijph.2022.1604405 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:193029 |