Venue: The Fuqua School of Business, Duke University, 1 Towerview Drive, Durham, NC 27708-0120
Presentation
Evaluating the Effect of Medical Resident Work-hour Reform on Hospital Productivity: 80 Hours Work Restriction on Medical Residents
The NY Section 405 Health Code serves as a natural experiment to evaluate how hospitals to react to work hour limitation. The change in the NY Health Code limits Medical Residents to work no more than 80 hours per week. This paper uses a two-year panel dataset of hospitals from the American Hospital Association (AHA) to evaluate the effect Section 405 has on attendings and medical resident marginal product. A weighted 2SLS approach is used to estimate a semi-parametric production function. The health code reform is found to cause a net gain in production of 43 inpatient days annually, but a loss of 14 case mix adjusted inpatient days annually. In response to the policy, hospital attendings are found to increase their marginal product with respect to inpatient days, which may imply a loss of production in other areas including medical research.