IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/zewdip/23021.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Hospital capacity reporting in Germany during COVID-19

Author

Listed:
  • Reif, Simon
  • Schubert, Sabrina

Abstract

During the COVID-19 pandemic, hospitals faced a unique predicament. Hospital care was urgently needed and society took efforts to prevent overwhelming hospitals. However, hospitals in case-based reimbursement schemes faced financial problems because of cancelled elective care visits and government regulations to keep capacity free for Covid-19 patients. Therefore, emergency financing measures were implemented in many countries. We analyze how hospitals in Germany responded to a scheme that provided financial support if the intensive care unit (ICU) occupancy rate in a county exceeded 75%. The scheme distributed over seven billion euros to hospitals and was notable because financial support depended on a measure (ICU occupancy rate) that hospitals could directly influence. To analyze hospitals' reactions to this scheme, we employ event study analyses comparing ICU capacity before and after regions became eligible. We find no evidence of strategic reporting at an economically meaningful and hence empirically detectable scale.

Suggested Citation

  • Reif, Simon & Schubert, Sabrina, 2023. "Hospital capacity reporting in Germany during COVID-19," ZEW Discussion Papers 23-021, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:zewdip:23021
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/273465/1/1853099503.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Pedro Barros & Gisele Braun, 2017. "Upcoding in a National Health Service: the evidence from Portugal," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(5), pages 600-618, May.
    2. Augurzky, Boris & Busse, Reinhard & Haering, Alexander & Nimptsch, Ulrike & Pilny, Adam & Werbeck, Anna, 2021. "Analysen zum Leistungsgeschehen der Krankenhäuser und zur Ausgleichspauschale in der Corona-Krise: Ergebnisse für den Zeitraum Januar bis Mai 2021," RWI Projektberichte, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, number 268725, Fall.
    3. Augurzky, Boris & Busse, Reinhard & Haering, Alexander & Nimptsch, Ulrike & Pilny, Adam & Werbeck, Anna, 2021. "Analysen zum Leistungsgeschehen der Krankenhäuser und zur Ausgleichspauschale in der Corona-Krise: Ergebnisse für den Zeitraum Januar bis Dezember 2020," RWI Projektberichte, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, number 234020, Fall.
    4. Augurzky, Boris & Busse, Reinhard & Haering, Alexander & Nimptsch, Ulrike & Pilny, Adam & Werbeck, Anna & Wuckel, Christiane, 2022. "Analysen zum Leistungsgeschehen der Krankenhäuser und zur Ausgleichspauschale in der Corona-Krise: Ergebnisse für den Zeitraum Januar bis Dezember 2021," RWI Projektberichte, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, number 266529, Fall.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Milstein, Ricarda & Schreyögg, Jonas, 2024. "The end of an era? Activity-based funding based on diagnosis-related groups: A review of payment reforms in the inpatient sector in 10 high-income countries," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 141(C).
    2. Cook, Amanda & Averett, Susan, 2020. "Do hospitals respond to changing incentive structures? Evidence from Medicare’s 2007 DRG restructuring," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    3. Lai, Yi & Fu, Hongqiao & Li, Ling & Yip, Winnie, 2022. "Hospital response to a case-based payment scheme under regional global budget: The case of Guangzhou in China," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 292(C).
    4. Milstein, Ricarda & Schreyögg, Jonas, 2022. "Activity-based funding based on diagnosis-related groups: The end of an era? A review of payment reforms in the inpatient sector in ten high-income countries," hche Research Papers 28, University of Hamburg, Hamburg Center for Health Economics (hche).
    5. Carine Milcent, 2019. "From downcoding to upcoding: DRG based payment in hospitals," Working Papers halshs-02317416, HAL.
    6. Carine Milcent, 2021. "From downcoding to upcoding: DRG based payment in hospitals," International Journal of Health Economics and Management, Springer, vol. 21(1), pages 1-26, March.
    7. Reif, Simon & Wichert, Sebastian & Wuppermann, Amelie, 2018. "Is it good to be too light? Birth weight thresholds in hospital reimbursement systems," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 1-25.
    8. Heike Hennig‐Schmidt & Hendrik Jürges & Daniel Wiesen, 2019. "Dishonesty in health care practice: A behavioral experiment on upcoding in neonatology," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(3), pages 319-338, March.
    9. A. James O'Malley & Thomas A. Bubolz & Jonathan S. Skinner, 2021. "The Diffusion of Health Care Fraud: A Network Analysis," NBER Working Papers 28560, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Gisele Teixeira Braun & Luis Gomes Centeno, 2018. "Health Systems," CFP Occasional Papers 01/2018, Portuguese Public Finance Council.
    11. Eunhae Shin, 2019. "Hospital responses to price shocks under the prospective payment system," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(2), pages 245-260, February.
    12. András Kiss & Norbert Kiss & Balázs Váradi, 2023. "Do budget constraints limit access to health care? Evidence from PCI treatments in Hungary," International Journal of Health Economics and Management, Springer, vol. 23(2), pages 281-302, June.
    13. Bauhoff, Sebastian & Fischer, Lisa & Göpffarth, Dirk & Wuppermann, Amelie C., 2017. "Plan responses to diagnosis-based payment: Evidence from Germany’s morbidity-based risk adjustment," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 397-413.
    14. Beth Parkinson & Rachel Meacock & Matt Sutton, 2019. "How do hospitals respond to price changes in emergency departments?," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(7), pages 830-842, July.
    15. Mona Groß & Hendrik Jürges & Daniel Wiesen, 2021. "The effects of audits and fines on upcoding in neonatology," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(8), pages 1978-1986, August.
    16. Qian, Mengcen & Zhang, Xinyu & Chen, Yajing & Xu, Su & Ying, Xiaohua, 2021. "The pilot of a new patient classification-based payment system in China: The impact on costs, length of stay and quality," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 289(C).
    17. Carine Milcent, 2019. "From downcoding to upcoding: DRG based payment in hospitals," PSE Working Papers halshs-02317416, HAL.
    18. Helen Hayes & Jonathan Stokes & Matt Sutton & Rachel Meacock, 2024. "How do hospitals respond to payment unbundling for diagnostic imaging of suspected cancer patients?," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 33(5), pages 823-843, May.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Hospitals; Misreporting; Financial Support Programs; Covid;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I11 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Analysis of Health Care Markets
    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
    • H27 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Other Sources of Revenue

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:zewdip:23021. 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: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/zemande.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.