How do Hospitals Respond to Payment Incentives?

Gautam Gowrisankaran, Keith A. Joiner and Jianjing Lin ()

No 22873, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: A recent literature finds that hospitals “upcode” when doing so increases revenues, suggesting that incomplete information creates substantial distortions. However, reporting complete information is itself costly. We examine the impact of both revenues and coding costs on hospital billing practices for Medicare inpatients. Following the literature, we investigate the fraction of patients top coded as the revenues from top coding vary. We then examine how this fraction changes following Medicare reforms—which increased the requirements and complexity to justify top codes—interacted with hospital electronic medical record adoption—which may decrease coding costs. We find evidence that coding costs drive top coding behavior.

JEL-codes: H51 I11 I13 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
Note: EH IO
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Working Paper: How do Hospitals Respond to Payment Incentives? (2019)
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