Does Hospital Competition Harm Inpatient Quality? Empirical Evidence from Shanxi, China

This study aimed to determine whether hospital competition is associated with improved in-hospital mortality in Shanxi, China. We included a total of 46,959 hospitalizations for acute myocardial infarction (AMI) and 44,063 hospitalizations for pneumonia from 2015 to 2017. Hospital competition was measured as Herfindahl–Hirschman Index based on the patient predicted flow approach. Two-level random-intercept logistic models were applied to explore the effects of hospital competition on quality for both AMI and pneumonia diagnoses. Hospital competition exerts negative or negligible effects on inpatient quality of care, and the pattern of competition effects on quality varies by specific diseases. While hospital competition is insignificantly correlated with lower AMI in-hospital mortality (odds ratio (OR): 0.94, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.77–1.11), high hospital competition was, in fact, associated with higher in-hospital mortality for pneumonia patients (OR: 1.99, 95% CI: 1.51–2.64). Our study suggests that simply encouraging hospital competition may not provide effective channels to improve inpatient quality of health care in China’s current health care system.