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Book/Printed Material Can ranking hospitals on the basis of patients' travel distances improve quality of care?

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Title

  • Can ranking hospitals on the basis of patients' travel distances improve quality of care?

Summary

  • "Conventional outcomes report cardsƯ public disclosure of information about the patient-background-adjusted health outcomes of individual hospitals and physicians -- may help improve quality, but they may also encourage providers to "game" the system by avoiding sick and/or seeking healthy patients. In this paper, I propose an alternative approach: ranking hospitals on the basis of the travel distances of their Medicare patients. At least in theory, a distance report card could dominate conventional outcomes report cards: a distance report card might measure quality of care at least as well but suffer less from selection problems. I use data on elderly Medicare beneficiaries with heart attack and stroke from 1994 and 1999 to show that a distance report card would be both valid Ư that is, correlated with true quality Ư and able to distinguish confidently among hospitals Ư that is, able to reject at conventional significance levels the hypothesis that the true quality of a low-ranked hospital was the same as the quality of the average hospital. The hypothetical distance report card I propose compares favorably to (although does not necessarily dominate) the California AMI outcomes report card"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site.

Names

  • Kessler, Daniel P.
  • National Bureau of Economic Research

Created / Published

  • Cambridge, MA : National Bureau of Economic Research, c2005.

Headings

  • -  Hospitals--Evaluation
  • -  Medicare
  • -  Patients
  • -  Transportation

Notes

  • -  Title from PDF file as viewed on 7/11/2005.
  • -  Includes bibliographical references.
  • -  Also available in print.
  • -  Mode of access: World Wide Web.
  • -  System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Call Number/Physical Location

  • HB1

Digital Id

Library of Congress Control Number

  • 2005618405

Access Advisory

  • Unrestricted online access

Online Format

  • image
  • pdf

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Cite This Item

Citations are generated automatically from bibliographic data as a convenience, and may not be complete or accurate.

Chicago citation style:

Kessler, Daniel P, and National Bureau Of Economic Research. Can Ranking Hospitals on the Basis of Patients' Travel Distances Improve Quality of Care?. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2005. Pdf. https://www.loc.gov/item/2005618405/.

APA citation style:

Kessler, D. P. & National Bureau Of Economic Research. (2005) Can Ranking Hospitals on the Basis of Patients' Travel Distances Improve Quality of Care?. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research. [Pdf] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2005618405/.

MLA citation style:

Kessler, Daniel P, and National Bureau Of Economic Research. Can Ranking Hospitals on the Basis of Patients' Travel Distances Improve Quality of Care?. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2005. Pdf. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/2005618405/>.