RESERVE CAPACITY OF PUBLIC AND PRIVATE HOSPITALS IN RESPONSE TO DEMAND UNCERTAINTY
研究了公立和私立医院如何通过储备床位、设备等能力来应对需求波动，发现私立医院对需求不确定性的反应程度通常低于公立医院。
A feature of hospitals is that they face uncertain demand for the services they offer. To cover fluctuations in demand, they need to maintain reserve service capacity in the form of beds, equipment, personnel, etc. to minimize the probability of excess queuing or turning away patients, creating a trade-off between reserve service capacity and economic costs. Using a simple theoretical framework, we show how the reserve capacity established depends on institutional characteristics that can affect the objective of the hospital. In particular, we show that private and public hospitals may provide different levels of reserve capacity. In an empirical application using a panel data set of Spanish hospitals over the period 1996-2006, we model reserve service capacity using a distance frontier approach. Our results show that private hospitals generally react to a lesser extent to demand uncertainty than public hospitals.