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Sources of regional variation in healthcare utilization in Germany

Salm,Martin
; 
Wubker,Ansgar
Abstract
We examine sources of regional variation in ambulatory care utilization in Germany. We exploit patient migration to examine which share of regional variation in ambulatory care utilization can be attributed to demand factors and to supply factors, respectively. Based on administrative claim-level data we find that regional variation can be overwhelmingly explained by patient characteristics. Our results contrast with previous results for other countries, and they suggest that institutional rules in Germany successfully constrain supply-side variation in ambulatory care use between German regions for most patients. Furthermore, we find that both demographics and other patient characteristics substantially contribute to regional variation and that causes of regional variation vary when comparing different regions within Germany.
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Publisher Copyright: © 2019
Date
2020-01
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Tilburg University Research Output Collection
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Keywords
Germany, Healthcare spending, Regional variation
Citation
Salm, M & Wubker, A 2020, 'Sources of regional variation in healthcare utilization in Germany', Journal of Health Economics, vol. 69, 102271. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhealeco.2019.102271
URI
https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14602/72939
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