Regional Purchasing Groups and Hospital Medicine Prices: Evidence from Group Creations

Léa Toulemon (1, 2, 3)

1 Hospinnomics (PSE - AP-HP)
2 PSE - Paris School of Economics
3 AP-HP - Assistance publique - Hôpitaux de Paris (AP-HP)

This paper estimates the impact of group purchasing on medicine prices in French hospitals, taking advantage of the entry of hospitals into regional purchasing groups between 2009 and 2014. This paper uses a new database providing the average annual prices paid for all innovative and costly medicines in public hospitals. Using a fixed effects model that controls for hospitals' medicine-specific bargaining abilities and medicine-specific price trends, I find that group purchasing reduces prices of medicines in oligopoly markets, but has no impact on the prices of medicines with no competitors.

Mots clés: hospital medicine prices; purchasing groups; bargaining ability

Domaines: Économie et finance quantitative [q-fin]

Léa Toulemon. Regional Purchasing Groups and Hospital Medicine Prices: Evidence from Group Creations. 2017. ⟨hal-01659176⟩