What is the impact of private for-profit (PfP) hospital ownership on costs and quality of care? In light of a substantial and increasing share of PfP hospitals in many hospital markets like the USA or Germany, this is an important question. We estimate the effect of PfP ownership on hospital 30-day- and 1-year-mortality outcomes and hospital costs by focusing on heart attacks and pneumonia, two very common conditions in healthcare markets. We use rich administrative hospital data from Germany for the years 2006–2015. Applying differential distance as instrument for hospital choice, we imitate randomization of patients into PfP hospitals. Our results suggest that PfP hospitals have no higher mortality rates for heart attack treatment than public ones. For pneumonia patients, we even find lower 30-day-mortality rates of PfP hospitals compared to public hospitals. Finally, we show that PfP hospitals have higher hospital costs than public or private not-for-profit hospitals for both conditions.

中文翻译：

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私人营利性医院所有权对费用和护理质量的影响-来自德国的证据

私人营利性（PfP）医院所有权对费用和医疗质量有何影响？鉴于PfP医院在美国或德国等许多医院市场中所占份额不断增加，这是一个重要的问题。我们通过关注心脏病和肺炎这两种医疗保健市场中非常普遍的状况，来估计PfP所有权对医院30天和1年死亡率的结果以及医院成本的影响。我们使用来自德国的2006-2015年丰富的行政医院数据。应用距离差作为医院选择的工具，我们将患者随机分为PfP医院。我们的结果表明，PfP医院的心脏病发作死亡率没有公立医院更高。对于肺炎患者，与公立医院相比，PfP医院的30天死亡率更低。最后，我们证明在这两种情况下，PfP医院的住院费用均高于公立或私立非营利性医院。