Hospital Costs and Excess Bed Capacity: A Statistical Analysis

Theodore E. Keeler and John S. Ying.

No 93-209, Economics Working Papers from University of California at Berkeley

Abstract: The present paper develops and estimates a cost model for U.S. hospitals which enables us to analyze the cost of excess bed capacity. A new estimate is worth making for at least two reasons. First, recent changes in the economic environment in which hospitals operate has caused their utilization rates in the U.S. to fall sharply over the past decade, making previous estimates inaccurate. Second, the present paper employs econometric techniques of cost estimation not previously applied to this problem, with estimation based on all U.S. short-term community hospitals from 1979 through 1989. Our results, based on conservative estimates of the average optimal occupancy rate, indicate an annual cost of excess bed capacity (in current dollars) of $13.2 billion in 1989, $18.4 billion in 1991, and over $20 billion in 1993.

Date: 1993-04-01
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.haas.berkeley.edu/groups/iber/wps/econ/E93-209.doc main text, MS Word format (application/msword)
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:ucb:calbwp:93-209

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IBER, F502 Haas Building, University of California, Berkeley CA 94720-1922

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economics Working Papers from University of California at Berkeley University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA USA. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Christopher F. Baum ().