 Who responds to longer wait times? The effects of predicted emergency wait times on the health and volume of patients who present for careJournal of Health Economics, 2024, vol. 96, issue C Abstract: Healthcare is often free at the point-of-care so that price does not deter patients. However, the dis-utility from waiting for care that often occurs could also lead to deterrence. I investigate responses in the volume and types of patients that demand emergency care when predicted waiting times quasi-randomly change. I leverage a discontinuity to compare emergency sites with similar predicted wait times but with different apparent wait times displayed to patients. I use impulse response functions estimated by local projections to estimate effects of predicted wait times on patient demand for care. An additional thirty minutes of predicted wait time results in 15% fewer waiting patients at urgent cares and 2% fewer waiting patients at emergency departments within three hours of display. Patients that stop using emergency care are also triaged as healthier. However, at very high predicted wait times, there are reductions in demand for all patients including sicker patients. Keywords: Demand for health; Healthcare technologies; Emergency wait times (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:96:y:2024:i:c:s0167629624000432 DOI: 10.1016/j.jhealeco.2024.102898 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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