Low staffing in the maternity ward : keep calm and call the surgeon
Facchini, Gabriel (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Departament d'Economia Aplicada)

Date:	2022
Abstract:	This paper examines how workload affects the provision of care in a large but understudied segment of the healthcare sector - maternity wards. I use detailed patient-level administrative data on childbirth, and exploit quasi-random assignment of unscheduled patients to different staffing ratios. I find that the probability of C-section increases at a decreasing rate with workload. I show that this result is not attributable to patients' differential sorting across staffing levels. Instead, I find evidence that C-sections are used to alleviate midwives' workload -they are faster than vaginal births and performed by physicians. I also exploit patient's civil status to determine whether the effect varies with patient's bargaining power -single women are on average more likely to be alone in the delivery room. Consistent with induced demand, only single patients are more likely to receive a C-section when admitted at high workload levels.
Grants:	Agència de Gestió d'Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca 2017/SGR-1301 Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte PID2019-104619RB-C43
Note:	Altres ajuts: acords transformatius de la UAB
Rights:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, i la comunicació pública de l'obra, sempre que no sigui amb finalitats comercials, i sempre que es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original. No es permet la creació d'obres derivades.
Language:	Anglès
Document:	Article ; recerca ; Versió publicada
Published in:	Journal of economic behavior & organization, Vol. 197 (may 2022) , p. 370-394, ISSN 0167-2681

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2022.03.013

25 p, 1.5 MB

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