The impact of Hill-Burton: an analysis of hospital bed and physician distribution in the United States, 1950-1970.
The Hospital Survey and Construction Act of 1946, commonly known as the Hill-Burton Act, was intended to improve the supply, distribution and quality of general hospital beds across the United States. Some also saw the program as a means of affecting the supply and distribution of physicians. The strategy used here for evaluating the Hill-Burton program derives in part from the assumptions about health resources supplies on which Hill-Burton policy was found and in part from a model of socioeconomic convergence developed in public policy research on the American states. Major conclusions include 1) Hill-Burton had a major redistributive impact on state bed supplies; 2) physician redistribution lagged far behind progress in bed redistribution; and 3) interstate distribution of physicians appears to have been unaffected by Hill-Burton-associated bed redistribution, a finding contrary to other work in this area.
D001513:Beds / Q000600:supply & distribution*; D004469:Economics, Hospital; D005380:Financing, Government; D006295:Health Resources / Q000639:trends; D006801:Humans; D007882:Legislation, Hospital; D010820:Physicians / Q000600:supply & distribution*; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D014481:United States; D014507:Urbanization / Q000639:trends