Productivity and quality in health care: Evidence from the dialysis industry
Published
Journal Article
© The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Review of Economic Studies Limited. We show that healthcare providers face a tradeoffbetween increasing the number of patients they treat and improving their quality of care. To measure the magnitude of this quality-quantity tradeoff, we estimate a model of dialysis provision that explicitly incorporates a centre's unobservable and endogenous choice of treatment quality while allowing for unobserved differences in productivity across centres. We find that a centre that reduces its quality standards such that its expected rate of septic infections increases by 1 percentage point can increase its patient load by 1.6%, holding productivity, capital, and labour fixed; this corresponds to an elasticity of quantity with respect to quality of -0.2. Notably, our approach provides estimates of productivity that control for differences in quality, whereas traditional methods would misattribute lower-quality care to greater productivity.
Full Text
Duke Authors
Cited Authors
- Grieco, PLE; Mcdevitt, RC
Published Date
- January 1, 2017
Published In
Volume / Issue
- 84 / 3
Start / End Page
- 1071 - 1105
Electronic International Standard Serial Number (EISSN)
- 1467-937X
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)
- 0034-6527
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
- 10.1093/restud/rdw042
Citation Source
- Scopus