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

在亚太区的医疗服务收费补偿制度下，医院之间为了吸引更多的病人，必须互相竞争。由于每项服务的收费都是由政府统一决定的，它们似乎存在非价格竞争。我们假设，医院采用新技术，如CT和MRI，以证明他们的质量，以便他们可以吸引更多的病人。我们使用了200张床位以下医院的数据。我们挑选了几个由都道府县定义的第二医疗区。采用多元回归分析方法，探讨门诊量与医疗设备、人力资源、医院特色的关系。一些设备，如磁共振成像和纤维镜显示出积极的影响，增加门诊病人的数量。

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.