Table 3.
Model Predicting Conditional Hospital-Level Prevalence of Observation Stays
| Coefficient | |
|---|---|
| Hospital characteristics | |
| Bed count | |
| 6–24 | −1.582 (1.365) |
| 25–49 | −1.609* (0.737) |
| 50–99 | −0.247 (0.794) |
| 200–299 | 1.435 (0.861) |
| 300–399 | 2.346** (0.853) |
| 400–499 | 1.353 (0.964) |
| 500+ | 0.665 (1.224) |
| Medical school affiliation | −0.641 (0.970) |
| Critical access hospital | −3.022** (1.106) |
| Freestanding emergency dept. | −1.238 (0.791) |
| Freestanding outpatient clinic | −1.589** (0.398) |
| Outpatient surgery unit | 1.866 (2.059) |
| Urgent care clinic | −0.682 (0.431) |
| Ownership type | |
| Government, non-federal | −1.447 (0.766) |
| For-profit | 0.899 (0.852) |
| ED visits as% of outpatient visits | 0.138** (0.018) |
| Medicare length of stay | 0.795 (0.494) |
| Patient characteristics | |
| Average age | −0.190 (0.103) |
| % Male | 0.153* (0.076) |
| % Black | −0.051* (0.020) |
| % Asian | 0.118 (0.061) |
| % Hispanic | −0.087 (0.065) |
| % Other race | 0.148 (0.146) |
| % Top 10 observation diagnoses | 0.263** (0.079) |
| Local health system characteristics | |
| Physicians per 1,000 population | 0.051 (0.242) |
| Population (10,000) | 0.005 (0.007) |
| % of Beneficiaries in Medicare HMO | 0.060 (0.042) |
| No. of short-term general hospitals per 100,000 population | 0.076 (0.048) |
| Metropolitan area | 1.121 (0.675) |
| Micropolitan area | −0.031 (0.818) |
| R2 | 0.65 |
| Sample size (N) | 3,024 |
Note. Coefficients for state dummy variables are not shown here but are available by request. Robust standard errors in parentheses.
*
Significant at 5%;
**
1%.