The Economic Crisis and Acute Myocardial Infarction: New Evidence Using Hospital-Level Data

Aleksandra Torbica (), Aldo Pietro Maggioni and Simone Ghislandi

PLOS ONE, 2015, vol. 10, issue 11, 1-13

Abstract: Objective: This research sought to assess whether and to what extent the ongoing economic crisis in Italy impacted hospitalizations, in-hospital mortality and expenditures associated with acute myocardial infarction (AMI). Methods: The data were obtained from the hospital discharge database of the Italian Health Ministry and aggregated at the hospital level. Each hospital (n = 549) was observed for 4 years and was geographically located within a “Sistema Locale del Lavoro” (SLL, i.e., clusters of neighboring towns with a common economic structure). For each SLL, the intensity of the crisis was determined, defined as the 2012–2008 increase in the area-specific unemployment rate. A difference-in-differences (DiD) approach was employed to compare the increases in AMI-related outcomes across different quintiles of crisis intensity. Results: Hospitals located in areas with the highest intensity of crisis (in the fifth quintile) had an increase of approximately 30 AMI cases annually (approximately 13%) compared with hospitals in area with lower crisis intensities (p

Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0142810 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 42810&type=printable (application/pdf)

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:plo:pone00:0142810

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0142810

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().