Hospital Crowding and Patient Outcomes

Using high-quality administrative data from Upper Austria, we analyze the eect of hospi- tal crowding on patients' short- and medium-term healthcare utilization and labor market outcomes. Focusing on acute inpatient diagnoses, we exploit idiosyncratic variation in daily diagnosis-related hospital occupancy rates to estimate the causal eect of hospital crowding. We nd that higher crowding levels reduce hospital care intensity, as reected in fewer medical services provided, lower hospital expenditures, and earlier discharges. Despite these changes, quality of care indicators, including readmissions and mortality, remain unaected. However, no signicant eects are observed either on inpatient and outpatient healthcare utilization in the short- and medium-term or on patients' labor market outcomes following initial hospitalization. These results suggest that crowding- induced dierences in hospital care do not lead to changes in patients' health or economic situations over the medium term.