Volume 12, Number 4 (Fall) 1977
Russell, Louise B. 1977. "The Diffusion of Hospital Technologies: Some Econometric Evidence." Journal of Human Resources 12(4):482-502.
This paper examines the diffusion of five hospital technologies that have spread widely since 1950; the post operative recovery room, the intensive care unit, the respiratory therapy department, diagnostic radioisotope facilities, and electroencephalograph. The regressions show that the logistic function describes the diffusion of hospital innovations as well as it does the diffusion of innovations in other industries, that the rates of diffusion for these technologies fall within the range established by work on other industries, and that the rates for technologies that were not yet widespread in the middle 1960s increased with the advent of Medicare and Medicaid.
The author is a Senior Fellow, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution. I would like to thank John O'Hare for research assistance. The research on which this paper is based and was supported, in part, by grants from the National Science Foundation's Office of National R&D Assessment (RDA75-14274 and PRA76-10470), and by a grant from the Norwegian Research Council, which supported my work while I was on leave from Brookings at the University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway. The opinions expressed in the paper should not be attributed to any of these institutions.
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