The medical record is a repository of clinical data, which can greatly enhance the quality of health and healthcare analysis. Administrative data are collected for the purpose of billing and reimbursement, and are valued by health researchers because the data are routinely audited to maintain...

In the early 2000s, Arizona, Maine, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, and Vermont expanded Medicaid to cover more low-income individuals, primarily childless adults. This change provides the researcher with an opportunity to analyze the effects of these expansions on labor supply and welfare...

The perception of the health sector from an economic policy point of view is changing. In the past, health expenditure was mostly seen as a "cost" item, probably because many medical treatments are covered by public health insurance. However, policymakers are increasingly realizing that a...

Excessive waiting times for elective surgery have been a long-standing concern in many national healthcare systems in the OECD. How do the hospital admission patterns that generate waiting lists affect different patients? What are the hospitals characteristics that determine waiting times? By...

Background: The regional availability of specialized physicians is an important aspect in healthcare of patients with IBD. The association between physician density and healthcare is not yet clear. Most studies did not consider district type, which reflects population density. Our research...

This article examines a model of competition between two types of health insurer: Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) and nonintegrated insurers. HMOs vertically integrate health care providers and pay them at a competitive price, while nonintegrated health insurers work as indemnity plans...

This paper examines the extent to which agglomeration of the hospital service industry enhances the productivity of producing health care. Specifically, we use a large set of private insurance claims from the FAIR Health database to show that an increasing spatial concentration of hospital...

Managers and administrators in charge of social protection and health financing, service purchasing and provision play a crucial role in harnessing the potential advantage of prudent organization, management and purchasing of health services, thereby supporting the attainment of Universal Health...

Background: We propose using neighborhood characteristics as demand-related morbidity adjusters to improve prediction models such as the risk equalization model. Results: Since the neighborhood has no explicit 'place' in healthcare demand models, we have developed the 'Neighborhood and...

We study the effects of balance billing, i.e., allowing physicians to charge a fee from patients in addition to the fee paid by Medicare. First, we show that on pure efficiency grounds the optimal Medicare fee under balance billing is zero. An active Medicare policy thus can only be justified...