Willingness to pay to reduce waiting time: Study of an Advanced Practice Physiotherapy Clinic

Objectives To determine how much people are willing to pay (WTP) to attend an Advanced Practice Physiotherapy (APP) clinic using a contingent valuation approach, and to investigate if parents had a greater WTP for their child than themselves. Methods Parents were invited to complete a survey on their WTP to attend both adult and child clinics, as well as sociodemographic and background characteristics. Univariate and multiple regression analyses were performed to identify those factors, which were significant predictors of WTP. Results The response rate was 76%. Mean stated WTP for the adult clinic was €327 (95% CI €287.-€378) and for the children’s clinic was €480 (95% CI €416.-€556), yielding a significant difference of €154 ( p ≤ .0001). Male gender was positively associated with WTP for the children’s clinic and having private health insurance and experience of working in healthcare were negatively associated with WTP, controlling for confounding variables. Conclusion This study explored the feasibility of the CV approach for APP clinic and whether parents had a positive WTP for their children over themselves for these services. The approach produced results demonstrating that the public place marked value on the service over and above the cost of the service. As the APP clinic also has an incremental cost saving to the health service over the cost of an appointment with usual care, these results show that the APP is both less costly and more beneficial than usual care and therefore a dominating strategy.