Administration above Administrators: The Changing Technology of Health Care Management
AEA Papers and Proceedings
vol. 110,
May 2020
(pp. 274-78)
Abstract
This paper measures the costs and types of administrative inputs in health care. We use data on labor and nonlabor inputs by industry and categorize them as administrative or not. We find that nonlabor inputs are a critical part of administrative spending, over and above labor inputs. Trends in nonlabor administrative input spending have differed dramatically from that of labor input spending for hospitals over the last 20 years. Hospitals have substituted away from office workers and toward externally purchased inputs. The share of managers and technical workers in administration has grown. The technology of health care administration is changing.Citation
Dunn, Abe, Joshua D. Gottlieb, and Adam Hale Shapiro. 2020. "Administration above Administrators: The Changing Technology of Health Care Management." AEA Papers and Proceedings, 110: 274-78. DOI: 10.1257/pandp.20201031Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- I11 Analysis of Health Care Markets
- I18 Health: Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health