Hospital Closures and Short-Run Change in Ambulance Call Times

Sookti Chaudhary, Alison Davis (), Kenneth Troske and SuZanne Troske
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Sookti Chaudhary: University of Kentucky
Alison Davis: University of Kentucky
SuZanne Troske: University of Kentucky

No 12797, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We measure one aspect of how access to emergency care through ambulance services changes for patients when a hospital closes. We empirically estimate the time needed to transport a patient to an emergency department in an ambulance in the period immediately after the hospital closes. We find urban patients in zip codes where a hospital closes have a small change in transportation time, where rural patients average an estimated 15.7 additional minutes – a 46% increase compared to the year before the closure. This increase is primarily the result of an almost 100 percent increase in the time it takes to transport a patient from the location of the incident to the hospital. The impact on rural Medicare-eligible patients is even larger. We find no change in the time it takes ambulances to arrive at an incident and only a small change in the time spent at the scene.

Keywords: ambulance; hospital closure; access to care; rural vs urban (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I11 I14 I18 R10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 39 pages
Date: 2019-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea and nep-tre
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