The impact of standardized disease-specific healthcare coverage

Abstract

We study the impact of a healthcare reform that standardized procedures and timely coverage of a set of diseases. Using Chile’s universe of death records and a difference-in-differences research design, we show that mortality from the diseases covered by this reform decreased by 4.4% on average. Disease-specific shocks or a resource shift from non-covered to covered diseases do not explain this effect. Evidence from polytraumatized inpatients suggests that the reform equalized utilization rates as it reduced the dispersion of risk-adjusted surgery rates and spending across hospitals.