Objectives: We investigate the long-run impact of changes in prescription drug sales on mortality and hospital utilization in Belgium during the first two decades of the 21st century. Methods: We analyze the correlation across diseases between changes in the drugs used to treat the disease and...

Objective: This study aims to investigate whether specific treatments or combinations of treatments are significantly associated with the profitability of Swiss acute-care hospitals under the current diagnosis-related group (S-DRG) reimbursement system, while accounting for differences between...

The tourism and hospitality sector are a key driver of Sub-Saharan Africa's economic growth, and a major source of foreign reserves and jobs: the sector has the potential to add 168 billion dollars in domestic revenue and foreign exchange, to strengthen supply chains, and to create over 18...

Patient selection remains a major challenge in evaluating hospital performance. We exploit the quasi-random assignment of patients to hospitals, based on a rotation schedule between hospitals in the Upper Austrian capital of Linz. In the instrumental variable (IV) framework, we use high-quality...

In the Philippines, hospital efficiency and quality are rarely measured because of the limited availability of administrative health data. We used 37 million inpatient claims from PhilHealth (2018-2023) to estimate hospital efficiency and quality across the Philippines. We found stark variation...

Inequities in access to healthcare are pervasive in many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), manifesting as large socio-economic gradients in healthcare utilization and subsequently, disparities in population outcomes. LMICs additionally often confront inefficient health systems,...

Background Palliative care (PC) aims at improving the quality of life of patients suffering from life-threatening and life-limiting illnesses. International studies have found that PC is not only helpful for controlling symptoms and reducing hospital stays at the end of life, but also associated...

Background The economic impact of RARP versus laparoscopic (LRP) or open surgical radical prostatectomy (OSRP) is unclear. The objective is to estimate and compare the total cost of radical prostatectomy with and without robot assistance from the French establishment perspective. This estimate...

Background University-based hospitals in Thailand face increasing financial strain due to insufficient reimbursement for inpatient care. The public health financing system comprises three major schemes: the Universal Coverage Scheme (UCS), Social Security Scheme (SSS), and Civil Servant Medical...

Background Medicare Advantage (MA) penetration rates have shown an increase in rural areas in the past decade, increasing the bargaining power of MA plans relative to rural hospitals. We study the effect that this increase has had in the revenue of rural hospitals through reductions in the...

Introduction The annual increase in emergency department (ED) visits in Taiwan has led to overcrowding in major hospitals and extended patient stays in the ED. International studies suggest that prolonged ED stays may influence healthcare costs and clinical outcomes for hospitalized patients....

Background China started a pilot public hospital reform in 2012 to improve governance and efficiency in healthcare services delivery among county-level hospitals. This study aims to investigate the impact of the pilot reform on hospital efficiency and productivity by using a unique dataset of...

Background Chronic kidney disease or chronic renal failure is a progressive condition defined as abnormalities of kidney structure or function, present for longer than 3 months. It is estimated to affect more than 10% of the gen‑ eral population worldwide. Management of CKD represents an...

This study examines the characteristics of public sector 3,470 hospitals with high and low risk-adjusted intra-hospital mortality rates in Brazil, using administrative data for 2023 and 2013 from the Brazilian Unified Health System (SUS) and data from the 2013 World Management Survey of 260...

This report describes the results of an epidemiological and genomic study carried out in six hospitals in Romania to determine the extent of the spread of Providencia stuartii carrying blaNDM-1. Most of the 74 submitted P. stuartii isolates were resistant to penicillins, cephalosporins,...

(1) Background: The aim of the paper is to identify and assess if there are differences concerning the cash conversion cycle (CCC) according to different types of ownership authority of hospitals. The main research hypothesis developed for the purpose of this study assumes that the ownership...

Narrow hospital networks have proliferated in health systems with managed care. We investigate the causal effect of network breadth on mortality leveraging the termination of the largest health insurer in Colombia. The termination caused a substantial increase in mortality accompanied by...

Upcoding in Medicare has been a topic of interest to economists and policy makers for nearly 40 years. While upcoding is generally understood as "billing for services at higher level of complexity than the service actually pro- vided or documented," it has a wide range of definitions within the...

Background While COVID-19 hospitalization costs are essential for policymakers to make informed health care resource decisions, little is known about these costs in western Europe. The aim of the current study is to analyze these costs for a German setting, track the development of these costs...

Background Traumatic injuries are rising globally, disproportionately affecting low- and middle-income countries, constituting 88% of the burden of surgically treatable conditions. While contributing to the highest burden, LMICs also have the least availability of resources to address this...

Background Morocco is engaged in a health system reform aimed at generalizing health insurance across the whole population by 2025. This study aims to build a national database of costs at all levels of public hospitals in Morocco and craft this database as a resource for further use in a...

Background Hospital services are typically reimbursed using case-mix tools that group patients according to diagnoses and procedures. We recently developed a case-mix tool (i.e., the Queralt system) aimed at supporting clinicians in patient management. In this study, we compared the performance...

Background Obstetric fistula is incident and prevalent in low-income countries. Globally, about 100,000 women develop fistula annually. In Mozambique, more than 2,000 fistulas are reported annually. A national strategy to com- bat obstetric fistula has been implemented in Mozambique from...

We investigate the factors that influence the variance in hospital charges and inpatient care for kidney transplant cases in the US. Using the AHRQ's (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality) HCUP's (Hospital Cost and Utilization Project) NIS (National Inpatient Sample) database, we find that...

Background Atherosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease (ASCVD) is a global public health concern. This study aimed to estimate the healthcare resource utilization (HRU) and costs stratified by cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk categories using real-world evidence, in a regional population in...

Objective: Even in highly regulated and advanced health care markets, treatment costs and outcome quality substantially vary across facilities. Interhospital variation - particularly when it is not attributable to different patient compositions - might indicate inefficiencies in the health care...

In this paper, we examine trends in provider fees charged, government expenditure on private out-of-hospital medical services, and out of pocket costs following policy changes intended to reduce government expenditure. We examine the experience of a high-need patient group: people diagnosed with...

Background The objective of this study is to assess if waiting times for elective surgeries within the Portuguese National Health Service (NHS) are influenced by the waiting times at neighboring hospitals. Recognizing these interdependencies, and their extent, is crucial for understanding how...

Background The mismatch of medical resources is a significant issue in global healthcare, undermining both service accessibility and system efficiency. In China, despite the implementation of the "Healthy China" strategy, persistent mismatches remain due to factors such as industrialization,...