Abstract
This paper studies the impact of day-to-day variation in maternity ward crowding on medical procedure use and the health of infants and mothers. Exploiting data on the universe of Danish admissions to maternity wards in the years 2000-2014, we first document substantial day-to-day variation in admissions. Exploiting residual variation in crowding, we find that maternity wards change the provision of medical procedures and care on crowded days relative to less crowded days, and they do so in ways that alleviate their workload. We find very small and precisely estimated effects of crowding on child and maternal health. Thus our results suggest that, for the majority of uncomplicated births, maternity wards in Denmark can cope with the observed inside-ward variation in daily admissions without detectable health risks.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 102399 |
| Number of pages | 19 |
| Journal | Journal of Health Economics |
| Volume | 75 |
| Early online date | 22 Nov 2020 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Jan 2021 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Wüst acknowledges financial support from the Tryg Foundation and the Danish Council for Independent Research , grant 8019-00051B . Simonsen acknowledges financial support from Spar Nord Fonden . We thank Simon Burgess, Helena Skyt Nielsen, Stephanie von Hinke Kessler Scholder, Christine Valente, seminar participants at the University of Copenhagen, the University of Bergen, Lund University, and the ESPE (2018), EALE (2018) and ASSA (2019) conferences for helpful comments. We thank Ida Lykke Kristiansen for excellent research assistance.
Funding Information:
W?st acknowledges financial support from the Tryg Foundation and the Danish Council for Independent Research, grant 8019-00051B. Simonsen acknowledges financial support from Spar Nord Fonden. We thank Simon Burgess, Helena Skyt Nielsen, Stephanie von Hinke Kessler Scholder, Christine Valente, seminar participants at the University of Copenhagen, the University of Bergen, Lund University, and the ESPE (2018), EALE (2018) and ASSA (2019) conferences for helpful comments. We thank Ida Lykke Kristiansen for excellent research assistance.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Elsevier B.V.
Research Groups and Themes
- ECON CEPS Health
- ECON Applied Economics
Access to Document
- Full-text PDF (author’s accepted manuscript)
This is the author accepted manuscript (AAM). The final published version (version of record) is available online via Elsevier at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhealeco.2020.102399. Please refer to any applicable terms of use of the publisher.