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Health Economics

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PROGRAM DESCRIPTION

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Healthcare is a major domestic policy issue. National healthcare expenditures now exceed $1.9 trillion, consuming 16% of gross domestic product after a decade of relative stability. This growth in expenditures is likely to accelerate as the population ages, and as scientific progress introduces more effective, but more expensive, procedures.

The Health Economics Program’s mission is to study the ways in which economic incentives and government policies influence the quality and costs of healthcare. The program’s guiding philosophy is that society can deliver high-quality medical care while controlling expenditures. Healthcare providers, patients, and others must be offered incentives to balance costs against benefits to ensure that resources are not wasted. No other health policy research center focuses on the effects of incentives embodied in institutional arrangements.

Vivian Ho, the James A. Baker III Institute Chair in Health Economics, is heading a project funded by the National Cancer Institute to determine whether competition among hospitals versus centralization of complex cancer surgeries at large expert facilities improves patient welfare. She is studying the effects of competition versus regulation on patient mortality rates, hospital costs, and the prices that patients and insurers face for cancer surgery. Ho is also conducting a project funded by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute to determine the effect of state Certificate of Need (CON) regulations for cardiac care on patient outcomes and costs. She is studying how these state regulations influence patient mortality, costs, and access to care for angioplasty and open heart surgery. Sayaka Nakamura is at the Baker Institute through 2008 as the Sid Richardson Scholar in Health Economics. She is studying whether vertical integration of hospitals leads to better or worse outcomes for patients.

The program will aim to communicate its research results to health industry practitioners and policymakers through a biennial healthcare conference, which will emphasize dialogue between physicians, healthcare executives, policymakers, and researchers. Findings are being disseminated through public policy journals, clinical and social science journals, and international academic conferences. Another aim is to increase the available supply of researchers in the health policy field through training of Baker interns, undergraduate and graduate students at Rice University, and clinicians interested in health policy at the Texas Medical Center.

PUBLICATIONS
2008
Cardiac CON Regulations and the Availability and Use of Revascularization Services
Apr 11 2008
Vivian Ho, Joseph S. Ross, Brahmajee K. Nallamothu, Harlan M. Krumholz
Health Economics Newsletter - March 2008
Mar 01 2008
2007
Health Economics Newsletter - December 2007
Dec 01 2007
Vivian Ho
Estimating Cost Savings from Regionalizing Cardiac Procedures Using Hospital Discharge Data
Sep 01 2007
Vivian Ho, Laura A. Peterson, MD, MPH
Health Economics Newsletter - September 2007
Sep 01 2007
Vivian Ho
Does Certificate of Need Affect Cardiac Outcomes and Costs?
Jul 20 2007
Vivian Ho
Health Economics Newsletter - June 2007
Jun 01 2007
Vivian Ho
Regionalization Versus Competition in Complex Cancer Surgery
Mar 01 2007
Vivian Ho, Robert J. Town, PhD, Martin J. Heslin, MD
Health Economics Newsletter - March 2007
Mar 01 2007
Vivian Ho
2006
Vertical Integration of Hospitals: Patient Steering or Integrated Delivery of Care?
Nov 05 2006
Sayaka Nakamura
Patient Admission Patterns and Acquisitions of "Feeder" Hospitals
Oct 19 2006
Sayaka Nakamura, Cory Capps, David Dranove
Health Economics Newsletter - October 2006
Oct 15 2006
Vivian Ho
Health Economics Newsletter - August 2006
Aug 01 2006
Vivian Ho
Health Economics Newsletter - April 2006
Apr 01 2006
Vivian Ho
Trends in Hospital and Surgeon Volume and Operative Mortality for Cancer Surgery
Jan 01 2006
Vivian Ho, Martin J. Heslin, Huifeng Yun, Lee Howard
EVENTS