New evidence on geographic disparities in United States hospital capacity.
Thomas A HeglandPamela L OwensThomas M SeldenPublished in: Health services research (2022)
This study highlights the importance of lower hospital care quality and resource intensity in driving racial and ethnic, as well as income, disparities in hospital care-related outcomes. This study also contributes an alternative approach for measuring local hospital capacity that accounts for cross-hospital service area flows. Adjusting for these flows is necessary to avoid underestimating the supply of capacity in rural areas and overestimating it in places where non-Hispanic Black individuals tend to live.