Volume 13, (Supplement) 1978
Pauly, Mark V. 1978. "Medical Staff Characteristics and Hospital Costs." Journal of Human Resources 13(S):77-111.
In order to test the hypothesis that medical staff physicians affect hospital behavior, this paper relates cost data for a sample of non-major-teaching, short-term hospitals to information on the characteristics of the medical staff which treats patients in those hospitals. Measured characteristics of the staff include specialty mix of attending physicians, board-certification status, and the concentration of hospital output among attending physicians. Medical staff variables are found to be as important as measured casemix in explaining cost variation across hospitals. The results are shown to have implications for behavioral models of the hospital and for hospital reimbursement policy.
The author is Professor of Economics, Northwestern University. This research was supported by Social Security Administration Grant 10-P-57857/4. The research assistance of T. Beazoglou is gratefully acknowledged. I am indebted to the participants in the NBER Conference on the Economics of Physician and Patient Behavior, especially Roger Feldman and Joseph Newhouse, for helpful comments.
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