Influence of non-price competition among hospitals on health care delivery system

在日本医疗保健的服务费用报销制度下，为了吸引更多的病人，医院之间必须相互竞争。由于每项服务的费用都是由政府统一决定的，因此它们似乎存在非价格竞争。我们假设医院采用ct和核磁共振等新技术来展示其质量，从而吸引更多的患者。我们使用的数据是床位在200张以下的医院。我们挑选了几个县划定的第二医疗护理区。采用多元回归分析，探讨门诊人数与医疗设备、人力资源、医院特点之间的关系。核磁共振、纤维镜等设备对增加门诊人数有积极影响。

Under the fee for service reimbursement system of health care in apan, hospitals have to compete with each other in order to attract more patients. Because fee for each service is universally determined by the government, they seem to have non-price competition. We hypothesized that hospitals adopted new technologies such as CTs and MRIs to demonstrate their quality so that they could attract more patients. We used data of hospitals under 200 beds. We picked up several second medical care areas defined by prefectures. We performed multiple regression analyzes to investigate relationship between the number of outpatients and medical equipments, human resources and hospital characteristics. Some equipments such as MRIs and fiberscopies showed positive influence to increase the number of outpatients.