Natural Disasters and Elective Medical Services: How Big is the Bounce-Back?

Tatyana Deryugina, Jonathan Gruber, Adrienne Sabety

Research output: Working paper

Abstract

COVID-19 has created a dual set of stresses on health care systems worldwide: a rise in expensive intensive care services and a dramatic decline in elective services. The U.S. government has responded with both grant and loan programs to help health care providers weather the storm. But the optimal size and nature of such programs are hard to evaluate without an understanding of the ability of providers to make up their lost elective service revenues over time. In this paper, we study the closest relevant parallel to the reduction in elective services seen under COVID-19: hurricanes. We match information on hurricanes to data on Medicare hospital elective visits and charges from 1997-2013, comparing counties impacted by hurricanes to nearby unaffected counties. We find that the average hurricane reduces elective services by about 7% in the month it makes landfall. For the most severe hurricanes, we estimate a reduction of more than 20%. Services return to baseline fairly rapidly, but for severe hurricanes it takes a year or more to make up lost revenues. Projections based on variation in hurricane severity suggest that it will take over 3 years for providers to make up the lost revenue from COVID-19.
Original languageEnglish (US)
PublisherNational Bureau of Economic Research
Number of pages45
DOIs
StatePublished - Jul 2020

Publication series

NameNBER Working Paper
No.27505

Keywords

  • coronavirus
  • COVID-19
  • severe
  • Novel coronavirus
  • 2019-nCoV
  • Pandemic

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Natural Disasters and Elective Medical Services: How Big is the Bounce-Back?'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this