Work

Hospital Allocation and Racial Disparities in Health Care

Year: 2022

Type: article

Abstract: We develop a framework to measure the role of hospital allocation in racial disparities in health care and use it to study Black and white heart attack patients. Black patients receive care at lower-performing hospitals than white patients. However, over two decades, the performance gap between hospitals treating Black and white patients shrank by over two-thirds. This progress is due to more rapid performance improvement at hospitals that tended to treat Black patients rather than reallocation of patients. Hospital improvement is correlated with adoption of a productivity-raising input, beta blockers. Our work highlights reallocation and performance improvement as future disparity-reduction levers.

Source: The Review of Economics and Statistics

DOI: 10.1162/rest_a_01248

Authors: Amitabh Chandra, Pragya Kakani, Adam Sacarny

Institutions: National Bureau of Economic Research, Harvard University, Columbia University

Language: English

Topic: Health disparities and outcomes

Subfield: Health

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDGs: Reduced inequalities, Good health and well-being

Open Access status: green

Funders: Harvard University, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality