Medical Competition Saves Lives Without Raising Costs

From "Death by Market Power: Reform, Competition and Patient Outcomes in the National Health Service" by Martin S. Gaynor, Carnegie Mellon University, Carol Propper, University of Bristol and Rodrigo Moreno-Serra, University of York, July 2010.

we estimate the impact of the introduction of competition on not only clinical outcomes but also productivity and expenditure. Our data set is large, containing information on approximately 68,000 discharges per year per hospital from 162 hospitals. We find that the effect of competition is to save lives without raising costs. Patients discharged from hospitals located in markets where competition was more feasible were less likely to die, had shorter length of stay and were treated at the same cost.

Ungated, free copy of the research paper is available here.

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