Factors Contributing to Unit Cost Instability in the Low-Volume Hospital

This project will study year-to-year variation in Medicare inpatient costs within rural hospitals, with a special focus on factors affecting unit costs in low-volume providers. We propose to analyze panel data constructed from eight years of Medicare hospital files, covering reports filed for all general, short-stay facilities with fiscal years beginning between October 1989 through September 1998. We believe that the proposed longitudinal study design could offer substantial improvement in our understanding of the rural hospital cost factions, which will help to evaluate the many options for payment relief and to target the most appropriate PPS reforms to the most appropriate rural providers.

There may be products related to this project; please contact the lead researcher for more information.