The effect of hospital ownership on quality of care: Evidence from England

We investigate whether quality of care differs between public and private hospitals in England using data on 3.8 million publicly-funded patients receiving 133 planned (non-emergency) treatments in 393 public and 190 private hospital sites. Private hospitals treat patients with fewer comorbidities a...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Gravelle, H. (Author), Gutacker, N. (Author), Moscelli, G. (Author), Siciliani, L. (Author)
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Elsevier B.V. 2018
Subjects:
Online Access:View Fulltext in Publisher
LEADER 01897nam a2200241Ia 4500
001 10.1016-j.jebo.2018.05.009
008 220706s2018 CNT 000 0 und d
020 |a 01672681 (ISSN) 
245 1 0 |a The effect of hospital ownership on quality of care: Evidence from England 
260 0 |b Elsevier B.V.  |c 2018 
856 |z View Fulltext in Publisher  |u https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2018.05.009 
520 3 |a We investigate whether quality of care differs between public and private hospitals in England using data on 3.8 million publicly-funded patients receiving 133 planned (non-emergency) treatments in 393 public and 190 private hospital sites. Private hospitals treat patients with fewer comorbidities and past hospitalisations. Controlling for observed patient characteristics and treatment type, private hospitals have fewer emergency readmissions. But patients’ choice of hospital may influenced by their unobserved morbidity. After instrumenting the choice of hospital type by the difference in distances from the patient to the nearest public and the nearest private hospital, the effect of private ownership changes sign and is statistically insignificant. Similar results are obtained with coarsened exact matching. We also find no quality differences between hospitals specialising in planned treatments and other hospitals, nor between for-profit and not-for-profit private hospitals. Our results show the importance of controlling for unobserved patient heterogeneity when comparing quality of public and private hospitals. © 2018 Elsevier B.V. 
650 0 4 |a Choice 
650 0 4 |a Distance 
650 0 4 |a Endogeneity 
650 0 4 |a Hospital 
650 0 4 |a Ownership 
650 0 4 |a Quality 
700 1 |a Gravelle, H.  |e author 
700 1 |a Gutacker, N.  |e author 
700 1 |a Moscelli, G.  |e author 
700 1 |a Siciliani, L.  |e author 
773 |t Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization