Essays on the economics of healthcare referrals.

Summary This thesis examines the role of specialist physician opinions as they have implications for patient outcomes and the organization and sustainability of health care systems. The first project examines the opinions of infectious disease specialists in a French tertiary (inpatient) hospital. The second project examines complementarity or substitution regarding relationships between general practitioners and specialists. The third examines how patients reacted to the reform of the care pathway in France in terms of compliance, and a preliminary examination of the factors affecting this compliance. The second and third papers examine aspects related to geographic variation as well. In my fourth article, I present a study protocol written as a follow-up to the first article.