title: Does seeing the doctor more often keep you out of the hospital?
abstract: By exploiting a unique health insurance benefit design, we provide novel evidence on the causal association between outpatient and inpatient care. Our results indicate that greater outpatient spending was associated with more hospital admissions: a $100 increase in outpatient spending was associated with a 1.9% increase in the probability of having an inpatient event and a 4.6% increase in inpatient spending among enrollees in our sample. Moreover, we present evidence that the increase in hospital admissions associated with greater outpatient spending was for conditions in which it is plausible to argue that the physician and patient could exercise discretion.
authors.affiliation: National Bureau of Economic Research, Institute of Government and Public Affairs, University of Illinois, Department of Economics, University of Illinois at Chicago, 815 West Van Buren Street, Suite 525, Chicago, IL 60607, United States. Electronic address: kaestner@uic.edu.
authors.forename: Robert
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Kaestner
authors.affiliation: Institute of Government and Public Affairs, University of Illinois, Division of Health Administration and Policy, School of Public Health, University of Illinois at Chicago, 1603 W. Taylor St., Chicago, IL 60612, United States. Electronic address: losasso@uic.edu.
authors.forename: Anthony T
authors.initials: AT
authors.lastname: Lo Sasso
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000553:Ambulatory Care / Q000191:economics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D005260:Female; D017048:Health Care Costs / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006760:Hospitalization / Q000191:economics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D014481:United States
keywords: Consumer-driven health insurance; Health insurance plan design; Health reimbursement arrangement; High deductible health insurance; Inpatient care; Outpatient care