 Do subsidized nursing homes and home care teams reduce hospital bed-blocking? Evidence from PortugalAna Moura Journal of Health Economics, 2022, vol. 84, issue C Abstract: Excessive length of hospital stay is among the leading sources of inefficiency in healthcare. When a patient is clinically fit to be discharged but requires support outside the hospital, which is not readily available, they remain hospitalized until a safe discharge is possible —a phenomenon called bed-blocking. I study whether the availability of subsidized nursing homes and home care teams reduces hospital bed-blocking. Using individual data on the universe of inpatient admissions at Portuguese hospitals during 2000–2015, I find that the entry of home care teams in a region reduces bed-blocking by 4 days per episode, on average. Nursing home entry only reduces bed-blocking among patients with high care needs or when the intensity of entry is high. Reductions in bed-blocking do not harm patients’ health. The beds freed up by reducing bed-blocking are used to admit additional elective patients. Keywords: Nursing home; Home care; Hospital bed-blocking; Delayed discharges (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jhecon:v:84:y:2022:i:c:s0167629622000595 DOI: 10.1016/j.jhealeco.2022.102640 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Health Economics is currently edited by J. P. Newhouse, A. J. Culyer, R. Frank, K. Claxton and T. McGuire More articles in Journal of Health Economics from Elsevier |
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