Do report cards influence hospital choice? The case of kidney transplantation.
The national program to report hospital-level outcomes for transplantation has been in place since 1991, yet it has not been addressed in the existing literature on hospital report cards. We study the impact of reported outcomes on demand at kidney transplant centers. Using a negative binomial regression with hospital fixed effects, we estimate the number of patients choosing each center as a function of reported outcomes. Parameters are identified by the within-hospital variation in outcomes over five successive report cards. We find some evidence that report cards influence younger and college-educated patients, but, overall, report cards do not affect demand.
Howard
David H
DH
Department of Health Policy and Management, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA. david.howard@emory.edu
Kaplan
Bruce
B
D002755:Choice Behavior; D006085:Graft Survival; D006302:Health Services Research; D006761:Hospitals / Q000592:standards*; D006801:Humans; D016030:Kidney Transplantation / Q000592:standards*; D017063:Outcome Assessment, Health Care / Q000592:standards*; D019984:Quality Indicators, Health Care