ArticleHealth care management science2021
The impact of quality on hospital choice. Which information affects patients' behavior for colorectal resection or knee replacement?
Article in Health care management science, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed.
- Inter-regional patient outmigration to Seoul in South Korea: the role of regional healthcare quality perceptions.BMC health services research · 2025Article
- Challenging selective contracting: reforms for enhancing patient empowerment in healthcare.Israel journal of health policy research · 2025Article
- The elicitation of patient preferences for hip replacement surgery: a discrete choice experiment.BMC health services research · 2025Article
- Inequities in Access to Tricuspid Valve Treatments: The Impact of Procedure and Volume Requirements.JACC. Advances · 2024Article
- [Comparison of hospital rating websites among each other and with data from hospital quality reports and quality assurance based on routine data].Urologie (Heidelberg, Germany) · 2024Article
- Driving time drives the hospital choice: choice models for pelvic organ prolapse surgery in Italy.The European journal of health economics : HEPAC : health economics in prevention and care · 2023Article
- How to direct patients to high-volume hospitals: exploring the influencing drivers.BMC health services research · 2023Article
- A composite measure for patient-reported outcomes in orthopedic care: design principles and validity checks.Quality of life research : an international journal of quality of life aspects of treatment, care and rehabilitation · 2023Article
- [Specialised treatment of colorectal cancer in certified cancer centres: Do patients really have to travel further?]Gesundheitswesen (Bundesverband der Arzte des Offentlichen Gesundheitsdienstes (Germany)) · 2023Article
- Robotic-assisted surgery for prostatectomy - does the diffusion of robotic systems contribute to treatment centralization and influence patients' hospital choice?Health economics review · 2023Article
- Can competition improve hospital quality of care? A difference-in-differences approach to evaluate the effect of increasing quality transparency on hospital quality.The European journal of health economics : HEPAC : health economics in prevention and care · 2022Article
- Defining minimum volume thresholds to increase quality of care: a new patient-oriented approach using mixed integer programming.The European journal of health economics : HEPAC : health economics in prevention and care · 2022Article
- Quality aspects relating to giving birth in Switzerland: An analysis of quality indicators in inpatient obstetrics from 2013 to 2017.Frontiers in public health · 2022Article
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Quality competition among hospitals, induced by patients freely choosing their hospital in a price regulated market, can only be realized if quality differences between hospitals are transparent, understandable, and thus influence patients' hospital choice. We use data from ~145,000 German patients and ~ 900 hospitals for colorectal resections and knee replacements to investigate whether patients value quality and specialization when choosing their hospital. Using a random utility choice model, we estimate patients' marginal utilities, willingness to travel and change in hospital demand for quality improvements. Patients respond to service quality and specialization and thus, quality competition seems to be present. Colorectal resection patients are willing to travel longer for more specialized hospitals (+9% for procedure volume, +9% for certification). Knee replacement patients travel longer for hospitals with better service quality (+6%) and higher procedure volume (+12%). However, clinical quality indicators, often difficult to access and interpret, barely play a role in patients' hospital choice. Furthermore, we find that competition on quality for colorectal resection is rather local, whereas for knee replacement we observe regional competition patterns.
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