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Short‐term fluctuations in hospital demand: implications for admission, discharge, and discriminatory behavior
Author(s) -
Sharma Rajiv,
Stano Miron,
Gehring Renu
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
the rand journal of economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.687
H-Index - 108
eISSN - 1756-2171
pISSN - 0741-6261
DOI - 10.1111/j.0741-6261.2008.00029.x
Subject(s) - medicaid , on demand , hospital discharge , hospital admission , term (time) , medicine , emergency medicine , economics , business , intensive care medicine , health care , physics , quantum mechanics , commerce , economic growth
We analyze admission and discharge decisions when hospitals become capacity constrained on high‐demand days, and develop a test for discrimination that, under certain circumstances, does not require controls for differences across patient groups. On high‐demand days, patients are discharged earlier than expected compared to those discharged on low‐demand days. High demand creates no statistically significant differences in hospitals' admission behavior. Thus, hospitals appear to ration capacity by hastening discharges rather than by restricting admissions. We could not reject a null hypothesis of no discrimination against Medicaid patients in discharges.