Information collaboration analysis in different tiers of healthcare system with co-produced incentives

Abstract

Information collaboration is crucial for optimizing resource allocation and improving diagnostic efficiency across hospital tiers through enhanced information technology capacity. To characterize the dynamic decision-making mechanism between general hospitals (GHs) and primary healthcare centers (PHCs), a two-player differential game model was constructed to analyze the relationship between optimal investment levels and corresponding payoffs and explore how GHs can incentivize collaboration by adjusting their investment intensity and sharing PHCs’ costs. The results indicate that information collaboration is a win-win strategy. Its dynamic equilibrium shows that GHs make intensive efforts in the early stage of digital construction. However, such investment decreases over time as patient information accessibility becomes limited. Under the collaboration mode, although GHs’ digital investment is lower than that in the independent operation, the total system payoff significantly increases. This improvement arises because PHCs, with their locational and informational advantages, undertake major digitalization tasks, allowing GHs to focus resources on disease treatment. The introduction of collaboration incentives strengthens this performance improvement.

Keywords

information collaboration / co-produced incentives / differential game / incentive mechanism

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Funding

National Natural Science Foundation of China(72071042)