Lessons from the Market for Organ Transplants
The three papers in this session evaluate factors that affect the type quality and cost of care. The first paper tests whether minimum volume thresholds used by private insurers appropriately identify transplant centers with better patient outcomes and or lower costs using patient distance to transplant centers meeting volume thresholds as an instrumental variable. The authors find that private insurer volume thresholds are not associated with better patient or graft survival for heart, kidney, liver or lung transplant. Consequently, minimum volume requirements likely reduce access to transplantation. The second paper evaluates indirect costs of hospitalizations for acute pediatric care. The authors find an average indirect cost due to hospitalizations of approximately $416. If indirect cost include income loss, it accounted for 80% of overall indirect costs. The third paper evaluates the adoption of electronic medical records on the racial health disparities in both procedural outcomes and treatment choice.