Is Hospital Quality Predictive of Pandemic Deaths? Evidence from US Counties

Johannes Kunz and Carol Propper

No 17365, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: In the large literature on the spatial-level correlates of COVID-19, the association between quality of hospital care and outcomes has received little attention to date. To examine whether county-level mortality is correlated with measures of hospital performance, we assess daily cumulative deaths and pre-crisis measures of hospital quality, accounting for state ï¬ xed-effects and potential confounders. As a measure of quality, we use the pre-pandemic adjusted ï¬ ve-year penalty rates for excess 30-day readmissions following pneumonia admissions for the hospitals accessible to county residents based on ambulance travel patterns. Our adjustment corrects for socio-economic status and down-weighs observations based on small samples. We ï¬ nd that a one-standard-deviation increase in the quality of local hospitals is associated with a 2% lower death rate (relative to the mean of 20 deaths per 10,000 people) one and a half years after the ï¬ rst recorded death.

Keywords: Covid-19; County-level deaths; Hospital quality; Health care systems (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H51 I11 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-06
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Working Paper: Is Hospital Quality Predictive of Pandemic Deaths? Evidence from US Counties (2022)
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