Investigating the geographic disparity in quality of care: the case of hospital readmission after acute myocardial infar
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Investigating the geographic disparity in quality of care: the case of hospital readmission after acute myocardial infarction in Italy Yuxi Wang1 · Simone Ghislandi1 · Aleksandra Torbica1 Received: 19 March 2020 / Accepted: 21 July 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Unwarranted variation in the quality of care challenges the sustainability of healthcare systems. Especially in decentralised healthcare systems, it is crucial to understand the drivers behind regional differences in hospital qualities such as unplanned readmissions. This paper examines the factors that influence the risk of unplanned hospital readmission and the geographic disparity of readmission rate in Italy. We use hospital discharge data from 2010 to 2015 for patients above 65 years old admitted with Acute Myocardial Infarction. Employing hierarchical models, we identified the patient and hospital-level determinants for unplanned readmission. In line with the literature, the risk of readmission increases with age and being male, while hospitals with higher patient volume and capacity tend to have lower unplanned readmission. In particular, we find that after patient risk-adjustments, there are differential effects of hospitalisation length-of-stay on the probability of readmission across the hospitals that are governed by different payment systems. For hospitals under a prospective payment system, the effect of length-of-stay in reducing the probability of readmission is weaker than hospitals under an ex-post global budget, but the overall readmission rates are the lowest. Moreover, there are substantial geographic variations in readmission rate across Local Health Authority and regions, and these variations of unplanned readmission are explained by differences in hospital length-of-stay and surgical procedures used. Our results demonstrate that differential hospital behaviours can be one of the potential mechanisms that drive geographic quality disparities. Keywords Geographic variation · Readmission · Rehospitalisation · Italy · Quality of care · Length of stay JEL Classification I11 · I14 · D63
Introduction In recent decades, welfare states are increasingly faced with significant challenges of keeping health expenditures under control while increasing the quality of the healthcare system. As a result, several countries have implemented healthcare reforms to increase decentralisation[1–5], to contain cost[6, 7], to favour patient choice and competition[8, 9], and to focus on measuring performance[10–12]. Institutions and health systems at various levels adopted different forms of governance strategies. However, the responsibility * Yuxi Wang [email protected] 1
Centre for Research on Health and Social Care Management (CERGAS), Department of Social and Political Science, Bocconi University, Via Guglielmö Röntgen 1, 20136 Milan, MI, Italy
endowed at the sub-nation level and the quasi-market mechanism can potentially generate undesirable regional disparities in healthcare quality. As a result, an increasing body
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