The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and policy response on health care utilization: Evidence from county-level medical claims and cellphone data

Jonathan Cantor, Neeraj Sood, Dena M. Bravata, Megan Pera and Christopher Whaley

Journal of Health Economics, 2022, vol. 82, issue C

Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic has forced federal, state, and local policymakers to respond by legislating, enacting, and enforcing social distancing policies. However, the impact of these policies on healthcare utilization in the United States has been largely unexplored. We examine the impact of county-level shelter in place ordinances on healthcare utilization using two unique datasets—employer-sponsored insurance for over 6 million people in the US and cell phone location data. We find that introduction of these policies was associated with reductions in the use of preventive care, elective care, and the number of weekly visits to physician offices, hospitals and other health care-related industries. However, controlling for county-level exposure to the COVID-19 pandemic as a way to account for the endogenous nature of policy implementation reduces the impact of these policies. Our results imply that while social distancing policies do lead to reductions in healthcare utilization, much of these reductions would have occurred even in the absence of these policies.

Keywords: COVID-19 pandemic; Health care utilization; Telehealth; Shelter-in-place policies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

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Working Paper: The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic and Policy Response on Health Care Utilization: Evidence from County-level Medical Claims and Cellphone data (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jhecon:v:82:y:2022:i:c:s0167629622000017

DOI: 10.1016/j.jhealeco.2022.102581

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