Tarification des hôpitaux: La prise en compte des hétérogénéités

The purpose of this paper is to study hospital costs in the event of introduction of a Prospective Payment System in France. We use a nested three dimensional database (stays-hospitals-years) to identify hospital unobservable heterogeneity and a transitory moral hazard component of cost variability. Transitory moral hazard is about 50% of the standard error we estimate for cost variability due to permanent unobervable heterogeneity between hospitals. Simulations show that a cost reduction of about 16% can be expected from implementation of a payment system which allows for permanent unobserved heterogeneity and eliminates only transitory moral hazard.