When it pays to spend on health care
When someone is rushed to an emergency room with heart problems, does it matter how much money the hospital spends on that patient? Intuitively, it may seem logical that high-end medical care would lead to better results for patients. But economists and policy specialists have debated the question extensively, and uncovering a clear answer has proven difficult. Now an innovative new study by MIT economist Joseph Doyle shows that hospitals that spend more money to treat people who enter their emergency rooms are indeed successful in lowering the mortality rates of those patients. "More intensive and expensive treatment leads to better outcomes," says Doyle, the Alfred Henry (1929) and Jean Morrison Hayes Career Development Associate Professor of Applied Economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management, whose study examines tens of thousands of cases in which out-of-state visitors were admitted to emergency rooms in the state...