Does the Profitability of an Outpatient Surgery Influence where it is Performed? A Look at Ambulatory Surgery Centers and Hospitals
Michael Plotzke () and
Charles Courtemanche
No 09-4, UNCG Economics Working Papers from University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Department of Economics
Abstract:
Ambulatory Surgery Centers (ASCs) are small (typically physician owned) healthcare facilities that specialize in performing outpatient surgeries and therefore compete against hospitals for patients. Physicians who own ASCs could potentially treat their most profitable patients at their ASCs and less profitable patients at hospitals, reducing hospitals' profit. This paper asks if the profitability of an outpatient surgery impacts where a physician performs the surgery. Using data from the National Survey of Ambulatory Surgery, we find that higher profit surgeries do have a higher probability of receiving treatment at an ASC compared to a hospital. After controlling for the type of surgery performed, we find that a 10% increase in a surgery's profitability is associated with a 1 to 2 percentage point increase in the probability the surgery is performed at an ASC.
Keywords: Ambulatory Surgery Center; Physician Ownership; Outpatient Surgery; Profit (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 34 pages
Date: 2009-03-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)
Downloads: (external link)
https://bryan.uncg.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/09-04.pdf Full text (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found
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:ris:uncgec:2009_004
Access Statistics for this paper
More papers in UNCG Economics Working Papers from University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Department of Economics UNC Greensboro, Department of Economics, PO Box 26170, Bryan Building 462, Greensboro, NC 27402. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Albert Link ().