Abstract

High and increasing hospital prices could reflect market imperfections, including provider concentration. Yet high prices could also reflect increased willingness to pay by privately insured consumers for clinical and non-clinical quality. In this paper, we explore strategic quality choices where hospitals make quality investments to increase private revenue. We then measure the relationship between potential prices and numerous quality measures including patient satisfaction, hospital processes, risk-adjusted mortality, the revealed preferences of current Medicare patients, technology adoption, physician quality, and ED wait times. We show that across a range of measures quality is correlated with the profitability of the payer mix: hospitals with more potential privately insured patients are of higher quality.

Talk to us

Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have

Schedule a call

Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.