Determination of Nursing Price using Willingness to Pay

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It will become more and more popular to use the long-term care facilities and home health care services with the chronic disease increasing. It depends on how much the consumers would pay and purchase the services. They might get more benefits from that kind of services than from ordinary hospitalization. So far, the study of determining the medical service price has focused most often on the efforts from the providers' view. But it must be reasonable to include the consumers' value for the service. This study was performed to assess WTP(Willingness to Pay) for home health care service in order to apply to the determination of nursing price in a reasonable manner. In this study, respondents were asked if they would pay for the service's intangible benefits under the four different types(open-ended minimum WTP, open-ended maximum WTP, bidding WTP, referendum WTP). The contingent valuation method is a potentially useful tool in understanding how people value the benefits of the service. As a result, average open-ended minimum WTP was W16,015 per day among 65 respondents. Average open-ended maximum WTP was W29,154 per day among 65 respondents. Average bidding WTP was W26,300 per day among 65 respondents. Average referendum WTP was W22,200 per day among 70 respondents. The results of regression analyses were also consistent with theoretical prediction, e.g., increasing WTP with consumers' value for the service, state of patients, and household income. This study demonstrated that it was more reasonable to consider the consumers' value in determining the services' price. In addition, a further study is needed to test the validity of this CV method and to determine a proper nursing price based on the consumers' view.