Comparing quality of care in public and private hospitals using Western Australia's mortality and hospital morbidity date (1995-2004)

Mai Pham, Mai Pham, James Butler, Renata Hasanova

    Research output: Working paper

    Abstract

    Using linked mortality and hospital morbidity data from Western Australia over a 10-year period (1995-2004), this paper provides an empirical assessment of the relative performance of WA publicand private hospitals in terms of quality of care reflected by hospital adverse events and mortality. Four measures of the quality of care are used: adverse events for patients admitted with any illness; in-hospital mortality for AMI patients; in-hospital mortality for patients admitted with diagnoses other than cardiac disease; and 30 day post-discharge mortality for all patients. The examination of more than one quality indicator aims to reduce possible bias in drawing a conclusion about hospital relative performance. Multi-level logistic regression models are used to undertake the analysis. The results suggest that private hospitals perform better than public hospitals if 30-day post-discharge mortality is used as a performance indicator. However, public hospitals performance is superior if adverse events and non-cardiac non-stroke in-hospital mortality are used as performance indicators. The results for in-hospital AMI mortality indicate no significant difference in performance between the two ownership types. Although it is common for public hospitals to be criticised for sub-standard performance, results from this study emphasize that, holding other factors constant, public hospital performance is not always inferior compared with private hospitals. Onsome indicators, their performance appears to be the same or better than their private counterparts.
    Original languageEnglish
    Place of PublicationCanberra
    PublisherAustralian Centre for Economic Research on Health (ACERH)
    Pages34pp
    ISBN (Print)978-0-9806432-6-8
    Publication statusPublished - 2011

    Publication series

    Name
    ISSN (Print)1836-0130

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