The treatment of a patient often implies consultations with different health care professionals. This complex health care pathway raises the issue of the regulation of health care quality. In this study, we explore how teamwork among health care professionals affects the precaution behavior of each one depending on the liability regime. To this end, we develop a theoretical model that is tested in a controlled laboratory experiment. Each health care professional chooses the precaution level invested to treat the patient. His decisions have real consequences outside the lab for charities dealing with real patients. Experimental conditions vary the number of involved health care professionals and the liability regime. Contrary to theory, we show that the negligence rule and strict liability do not provide optimal incentives to take care. The negligence rule is more efficient than strict liability to reduce the absolute deviations from optimal precaution level. Moreover, under both liability rules, teamwork decreases the health care professionals’ precaution levels.

患者的治疗通常意味着咨询不同的医疗保健专业人员。这种复杂的医疗保健途径引发了医疗保健质量监管的问题。在这项研究中，我们探讨了医疗保健专业人员之间的团队合作如何根据责任制度影响每个人的预防行为。为此，我们开发了一个在受控实验室实验中进行测试的理论模型。每个医疗保健专业人员都选择为治疗患者而投资的预防级别。他的决定在实验室之外对处理真实患者的慈善机构产生了真正的影响。实验条件因涉及的医疗保健专业人员的数量和责任制度而异。与理论相反，我们表明疏忽规则和严格责任没有提供最佳的谨慎激励。疏忽规则比严格责任更有效地减少与最佳预防水平的绝对偏差。此外，根据这两种责任规则，团队合作降低了医疗保健专业人员的预防水平。