IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/rwirep/306838.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Nursing home shortage and hospital bed-blocking

Author

Listed:
  • Bergmann, Lea
  • Heger, Dörte
  • Wuckel, Christiane

Abstract

A hospital stay dramatically increases the risk that an elderly person will require long-term care. Due to increasing staff shortages in German nursing homes, patients who require nursing home care directly after a hospital stay often struggle to find a nursing home bed. This paper studies how hospital length of stay differs between care dependent individuals requiring and not requiring a nursing home bed, controlling for potential health differences between these groups. We find that the need for a nursing home bed is associated with approximately a 40% increase in length of stay. Since hospital care is much more expensive than nursing home care, bed-blocking is not only a concern for the patients but also for public policy.

Suggested Citation

  • Bergmann, Lea & Heger, Dörte & Wuckel, Christiane, 2024. "Nursing home shortage and hospital bed-blocking," Ruhr Economic Papers 1108, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:rwirep:306838
    DOI: 10.4419/96973286
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/306838/1/1909403881.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.4419/96973286?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
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Capacity; personnel shortage; long-term care; nursing and care homes; bed-blocking;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I11 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Analysis of Health Care Markets
    • J63 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Turnover; Vacancies; Layoffs

    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:zbw:rwirep:306838. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/rwiesde.html .

    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.