A Comparison of Hospital Responses to Reimbursement Policies for Medicaid Psychiatric Patients
评估不同医院报销方法对医疗补助精神病患者住院时长的影响，发现按病例预付费相比按成本报销能显著缩短住院时间。
Hospital expenditures continue to increase at rates that are higher than that of GNP growth. Policymakers are experimenting with a number of reimbursement methods in an attempt to curtail the growth in hospital costs. This article empirically assesses the impact of various hospital reimbursement methods on the use of hospital services. We specified and estimated a model of hospital duration for Medicaid psychiatric patients. A new semiparametric approach to estimation was implemented for a large national sample of hospital discharges. The empirical findings show significant reductions in hospital duration are associated with per case prospective payment as compared with cost-based reimbursement.