Hospital Capital Stock: Comparison of Medicare Cost Report and American Hospital Association Annual Survey Data

摘要

Many hypotheses have been advanced to explain variation in nonprofit hospital capital stock. Hospitals may acquire fixed assets (such as beds, equipment and buildings) to meet an increased demand for their services, to alter the quality of their product, to increase their productivity, to compete with other hospitals in their market areas, and to increase medical staff income. Further, the determinants of investment may vary across hospital types, market conditions, time, and capital components. The research discussed here demonstrates an application of two data sources which have recently become available: hospital Medicare Cost Reports and patient discharge abstract data. By providing measures of hospital output and factor prices, these sources facilitate examination of the role of behavioral (as oppose to structural) correlates of capital stock variation. This paper is organized as follows: relevant empirical studies are briefly summarized in Section II; the model and hypotheses are presented in Section III. In Section IV, the empirical model, measures, and data are discussed. Results and implications are summarized in Section V.