The potential cost savings of hospitals that teach
Purchase Print Copy
| Format | List Price | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Add to Cart | Paperback14 pages | $20.00 | $16.00 20% Web Discount |
Discusses propositions relevant to assessing the relationship between teaching and hospital costs. A proper measure of hospital costs will include physicians' fees for services. A number of cost studies do not include house staff charges and therefore are not useful in identifying the cost effect of teaching. Two analytical examples are developed that show that teaching hospitals may be less expensive. The first example, in which students are exogenous, suggests an econometric specification where student variables are interacted with a measure of patient care output. The second example suggests that both a measure of teaching and a measure of patient care are required in order to estimate a cost function. It is also a particular feature of that example that no cost savings are expected unless the student-physician ratio exceeds unity. The resulting models can help in isolating theoretical relationships between teaching and patient care costs, and can guide subsequent empirical work.
This report is part of the RAND Corporation Paper series. The paper was a product of the RAND Corporation from 1948 to 2003 that captured speeches, memorials, and derivative research, usually prepared on authors' own time and meant to be the scholarly or scientific contribution of individual authors to their professional fields. Papers were less formal than reports and did not require rigorous peer review.
This document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law. This representation of RAND intellectual property is provided for noncommercial use only. Unauthorized posting of this publication online is prohibited; linking directly to this product page is encouraged. Permission is required from RAND to reproduce, or reuse in another form, any of its research documents for commercial purposes. For information on reprint and reuse permissions, please visit www.rand.org/pubs/permissions.
The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.