Authors : Oluyele Akinkugbe and 1Idowu O. Kolawole
Abstract: Over the years, the measurement of quality of care has been identified with both conceptual and practical problems in the health economics literature. There are two main types of quality measures that can be used to judge quality health care: (i) consumer ratings that is, the information that looks at the health care from the consumer`s point of view; (ii) the clinical performance measures which looks at how well a health care organization prevents and treats illnesses. Despite the difficulty in characterizing what quality care really is, what is of utmost importance to everybody receiving, giving, or paying for health care is quality. This study measures the impact of the drive to attain quality health care on hospital cost in Botswana. By using nursing hours divided by patient days as a quality variable as commonly used by earlier researchers, we estimated an equation for hospital cost. From our empirical findings, the quality variable is positively related to hospital cost. The study suggests that quality is a strong determinant of hospital cost. This finding is consistent with most of the earlier studies that had also included quality variable in the cost functions.
Oluyele Akinkugbe and 1Idowu O. Kolawole , 2004. Hospital Cost and Quality of Health Care in Botswana . Pakistan Journal of Social Sciences, 2: 385-390.