Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP17632
Authors: Jan C. van Ours; Jakub Cerveny
Abstract: This paper investigates the effects of health-care spending on mortality rates of heart attack patients. We relate in-hospital deaths to in-hospital end-of-life spending and post-discharge deaths to post-discharge health-care spending. In our analysis, we use detailed administrative data on individual personal characteristics and information about health-care expenses at the regional level. To account for potential selectivity in the region of health-care treatment we compare local patients with visitors and stayers with recent movers from a different region. In regions with higher health-care spending mortality after heart attacks is substantially lower. Apparently, there are long-term returns to local health-care spending.
Keywords: healthcare spending; heart attack; mortality; duration models
JEL Codes: C41; H75; I11; I18
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| higher regional healthcare spending (H51) | lower mortality rates following heart attacks (I12) |
| in-hospital end-of-life spending (H51) | in-hospital mortality (I12) |
| post-discharge healthcare spending (H51) | mortality after hospital discharge (I12) |
| higher regional healthcare spending (H51) | lower in-hospital mortality (I14) |
| higher regional healthcare spending (H51) | lower post-discharge mortality (I12) |