Assessing the effect of standardized cost systems on financial performance. A difference-in-differences approach for hospitals according to their technological level
Beatriz García-Cornejo and
José Pérez-Méndez ()
Health Policy, 2018, vol. 122, issue 4, 396-403
Abstract:
Promoting the improvement of standardized cost systems (CS) is one of the measures available to health policy makers for the purpose of improving efficiency in hospitals over the long-term. Nevertheless, very few studies evaluate the relationship between alternative CS and the costs really incurred. We use data from 242 hospitals of the Spanish National Health Service (NHS) between 2010 and 2013 in order to explore the determinants of the cost per adjusted patient day, using a difference-in-differences approach where the treatment is the implementation of an advanced CS. We also investigate if the association between advanced CS and unit cost is different depending upon the technological level of the hospital. Results show that hospitals with more advanced CS contained their costs better. However, the latter effect of advanced CS is lower in hospitals with a greater endowment of high technology. Results suggest that health authorities should support the development of CS, particularly in high-tech hospitals, which are usually larger and more complex hospitals that tend to accumulate a greater portion of NHS hospital sector expenditure.
Keywords: Cost accounting systems; Hospital costs; Cost control; Management information systems; Technology; High-cost; Public hospitals (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168851018300289
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:hepoli:v:122:y:2018:i:4:p:396-403
DOI: 10.1016/j.healthpol.2018.01.013
Access Statistics for this article
Health Policy is currently edited by Katrien Kesteloot, Mia Defever and Irina Cleemput
More articles in Health Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu () and ().