On the efficient location of hospitals

Donald Vitaliano

Letters in Spatial and Resource Sciences, 2020, vol. 13, issue 1, No 1, 10 pages

Abstract: Abstract An efficient hospital location minimizes the sum of treatment costs and patient travel costs. This paper presents a model of a circular hospital market area and estimates the parameters of that model for 125 hospitals in New York State outside of New York City. On average, an efficient location involves a patient vehicle journey of 16 min, but the actual average is 42 min. Thus patients are required to travel too far, given the existing size and service mix of hospitals. Free entry is unlikely to remedy the situation since the number of hospitals has steadily declined due to continuing closures and mergers, and State policy essentially prohibits for-profit hospitals, which might otherwise seek to fill gaps in the market.

Keywords: Hospital location; Efficiency; Not-for-profit; Regulation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I18 L3 R3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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DOI: 10.1007/s12076-019-00241-1

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