IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/hlthec/v5y1996i3p195-216.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Marginal costs in general acute care hospitals: A comparison among California, New York and Canada

Author

Listed:
  • Korinna K. Hansen
  • Jack Zwanziger

Abstract

In the present paper we offer a detailed comparison of hospital costs between California and New York and two Canadian provinces (Ontario and British Columbia) in 1981 and 1985. We find that production technologies differ significantly between the two countries and between California and New York. Marginal costs and their distributions also differ across jurisdictions and across different size hospitals. Marginal cost levels were the lowest in Canadian hospitals for almost all outputs in both years and their distribution was also the tightest. Some very mild scale effects were also present in the acute care production. Hospitals in California experienced for the most part increasing marginal costs for acute care, whereas Canadian hospitals showed the reverse pattern. In New York we find a weak negative scale effect in acute care production. Density estimates conditional on hospital output reinforce these results.

Suggested Citation

  • Korinna K. Hansen & Jack Zwanziger, 1996. "Marginal costs in general acute care hospitals: A comparison among California, New York and Canada," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 5(3), pages 195-216, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:hlthec:v:5:y:1996:i:3:p:195-216
    DOI: 10.1002/(SICI)1099-1050(199605)5:33.0.CO;2-Q
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1099-1050(199605)5:33.0.CO;2-Q
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/(SICI)1099-1050(199605)5:33.0.CO;2-Q?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Breyer, Friedrich, 1987. "The specification of a hospital cost function : A comment on the recent literature," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 6(2), pages 147-157, June.
    2. Haber, Susan G. & Zwanziger, Jack & Anderson, Jack Geoffrey M. & Thorpe, Kenneth E. & Newhouse, Joseph P., 1992. "Hospital expenditures in the United States and Canada: do hospital worker wages explain the differences?," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 11(4), pages 453-465, December.
    3. Rogowski, Jeannette A. & Newhouse, Joseph P., 1992. "Estimating the indirect costs of teaching," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 11(2), pages 153-171, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Miika Linna & Unto Häkkinen & Mikko Peltola & Jon Magnussen & Kjartan Anthun & Sverre Kittelsen & Annette Roed & Kim Olsen & Emma Medin & Clas Rehnberg, 2010. "Measuring cost efficiency in the Nordic Hospitals—a cross-sectional comparison of public hospitals in 2002," Health Care Management Science, Springer, vol. 13(4), pages 346-357, December.
    2. Linna, Miika & Hakkinen, Unto & Magnussen, Jon, 2006. "Comparing hospital cost efficiency between Norway and Finland," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 77(3), pages 268-278, August.
    3. Medin, Emma & Häkkinen, Unto & Linna, Miika & Anthun, Kjartan S. & Kittelsen, Sverre A.C. & Rehnberg, Clas, 2013. "International hospital productivity comparison: Experiences from the Nordic countries," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 112(1), pages 80-87.
    4. Emma Medin & Kjartan Anthun & Unto Häkkinen & Sverre Kittelsen & Miika Linna & Jon Magnussen & Kim Olsen & Clas Rehnberg, 2011. "Cost efficiency of university hospitals in the Nordic countries: a cross-country analysis," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 12(6), pages 509-519, December.
    5. Dranove, David, 1998. "Economies of scale in non-revenue producing cost centers: Implications for hospital mergers," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(1), pages 69-83, January.
    6. Galina Besstremyannaya, 2015. "Heterogeneous effect of residency matching and prospective payment on labor returns and hospital scale economies," Discussion Papers 15-001, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mehdi Farsi, 2008. "The temporal variation of cost-efficiency in Switzerland’s hospitals: an application of mixed models," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 30(2), pages 155-168, October.
    2. Preyra, Colin & Pink, George, 2006. "Scale and scope efficiencies through hospital consolidations," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(6), pages 1049-1068, November.
    3. Kristensen, Troels & Olsen, Kim Rose & Kilsmark, Jannie & Lauridsen, Jørgen T. & Pedersen, Kjeld Møller, 2012. "Economies of scale and scope in the Danish hospital sector prior to radical restructuring plans," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 106(2), pages 120-126.
    4. Farsi, Mehdi & Filippini, Massimo, 2009. "An analysis of cost efficiency in Swiss multi-utilities," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 306-315, March.
    5. Siciliani, Luigi & Stanciole, Anderson & Jacobs, Rowena, 2009. "Do waiting times reduce hospital costs?," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 771-780, July.
    6. Lukas Kwietniewski & Mareike Heimeshoff & Jonas Schreyögg, 2017. "Estimation of a physician practice cost function," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 18(4), pages 481-494, May.
    7. Koop, Gary & Osiewalski, Jacek & Steel, Mark F. J., 1997. "Bayesian efficiency analysis through individual effects: Hospital cost frontiers," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 76(1-2), pages 77-105.
    8. Grosskopf, Shawna & Margaritis, Dimitri & Valdmanis, Vivian, 2001. "The effects of teaching on hospital productivity," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 189-204, September.
    9. Dor, Avi & Farley, Dean E., 1996. "Payment source and the cost of hospital care: Evidence from a multiproduct cost function with multiple payers," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(1), pages 1-21, February.
    10. Andrew J. Hogan & Luisa Franzini & James R. Boex, 2000. "Estimating the cost of primary care training in ambulatory settings," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 9(8), pages 715-726, December.
    11. Grosskopf, Shawna & Margaritis, Dimitri & Valdmanis, Vivian, 2004. "Competitive effects on teaching hospitals," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 154(2), pages 515-525, April.
    12. Neil Soderlund & Rowena Jacobs, 2001. "Towards panel data specifications of efficiency measures for English acute hospitals," Working Papers 185chedp, Centre for Health Economics, University of York.
    13. Kominski, Gerald F. & Long, Stephen H., 1997. "Medicare's disproportionate share adjustment and the cost of low-income patients," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(2), pages 177-190, April.
    14. Carlos Pestana Barros & António Gomes de Menezes & Jos頠 Cabral Vieira, 2013. "Measurement of hospital efficiency, using a latent class stochastic frontier model," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(1), pages 47-54, January.
    15. Sari, Nazmi, 2003. "Efficiency outcomes of market concentration and managed care," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 21(10), pages 1571-1589, December.
    16. Julia Bonastre & Marc le Vaillant & Gerard de Pouvourville, 2011. "The impact of research on hospital costs of care: an empirical study," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 20(1), pages 73-84, January.
    17. John Mullahy & Edward C. Norton, 2024. "Why Transform Y? The Pitfalls of Transformed Regressions with a Mass at Zero," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 86(2), pages 417-447, April.
    18. Mehdi Farsi & Massimo Filippini, 2008. "Effects of ownership, subsidization and teaching activities on hospital costs in Switzerland," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 17(3), pages 335-350, March.
    19. Koop, G. & Osiewalski, J. & Steel, M.F.J., 1994. "Hospital efficiency analysis through individual effects : A Bayesian approach," Other publications TiSEM dd6fed13-3fda-461f-9393-e, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    20. Nicholson, Sean & Song, David, 2001. "The incentive effects of the Medicare indirect medical education policy," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(6), pages 909-933, November.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:hlthec:v:5:y:1996:i:3:p:195-216. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/jhome/5749 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.