White W & Morrisey M, (1998)

‘Are Patients Travelling Further?’

International Journal of the Economics of Business 5(2): 203-221

• Empirical investigation into whether travel distances increased for privately insured patients relative to Medicare Patients.
• If managed care imposes increasing restrictions on provider choice, over time travel distances will increase for privately insured patients as a group relative to Medicare patients.
• Uses pooled cross-section data for patients discharged from California hospitals in 1985 and 1991.

Key results:

• Find no support for the hypothesis that travel increased for private patients relative to Medicare patients between 1985 and 1991. Thus no evidence exists of a change in relative travel overall.
• Whilst their findings may ease concerns about the effects of managed care on geographic access, they add to antitrust concerns about hospital mergers. If provider markets had in fact become (geographically) larger as a result of managed care, antitrust concerns might have been eased somewhat.

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