Sari, N. (2002)

‘Do Competition and Managed Care Improve Quality?’

Health Economics 11: 571-584

• Investigates the impact of managed care and hospital competition on quality using in-hospital complications as quality measures.
• The author uses panel data for hospitals from up to 16 states in the 1992-1997 period.

Key results:

• Both higher hospital market share and market concentration are associated with lower quality of care. Hospital mergers have undesirable quality consequences.
• Higher managed care penetration increases quality on several measures. For other complication categories, coefficient estimates are statistically insignificant.

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