We investigate quality provision and the occurrence of strategic behaviour in competitive hospital markets where providers are assumed to be semi-altruistic towards patients. For this, we employ a laboratory experiment with a hospital market framing. Subjects decide on the quality levels for one of three competing hospitals respectively. We vary the organizational aspect of whether quality decisions within hospitals are made by individuals or teams. Realized monetary patient benefits go to real patients outside the lab. In both settings, we find that degrees of cooperation quickly converge towards negative values, implying absence of collusion and patient centred or competitive quality choices. Moreover, hospitals treat quality as a strategic complement and adjust their quality choice in the same direction as their competitors. The response magnitude for team markets is weaker; this is driven by non-cooperative or altruistic teams, which tend to set levels of quality that are strategically independent.

我们调查竞争性医院市场中的质量提供和战略行为的发生，在这些市场中，医疗服务提供者被认为对患者是半利他的。为此，我们采用了医院市场框架的实验室实验。受试者分别决定三个竞争医院之一的质量水平。我们改变医院内部质量决策是由个人还是团队做出的组织方面。已实现的货币患者福利将流向实验室外的真实患者。在这两种情况下，我们发现合作程度很快趋于负值，这意味着不存在共谋和以患者为中心或竞争性的质量选择。此外，医院将质量视为战略补充，并朝着与竞争对手相同的方向调整质量选择。团队市场的反应幅度较弱；这是由不合作或无私的团队驱动的，这些团队往往会设定战略上独立的质量水平。