Discussion paper
DP15105 "Does Higher Hospital Quality Save Lives? The Association between" "COVID-19 Deaths and Hospital Quality in the USA
This paper examines the association between the quality of hospitals to which residents of a US county are exposed and deaths from COVID-19. We derive a measure of the hospitals accessible to county residents based on ambulance travel patterns. We estimate hospital quality from measures of performance used in a flagship national pay-for-performance program. We find that a standard deviation in local quality-
exposure is associated with a roughly 9% lower death rate. The preventive effects of access to high quality hospitals vary sharply by minority composition of the local population.
£6.00
