Health care policy reform: a microanalytic model for comparing hospitals in the United States and Germany.

Microcomparison, or single-component analysis, of health care systems offers a potentially better basis for reform than traditional macrocomparison analysis of aggregate elements. Using macroanalysis, available evidence shows that Germany provides cheaper but more effective hospital care than the United States. To find the causes for this outcome, we developed a microanalytic model of hospital administrators' perceptions, financial ratios, medical outcomes, and pharmaceutical costs. However, only data on pharmaceutical costs were available, and these were similar in both countries. Our significant outcome was development of a microcomparative model that gives world medical care providers new criteria for analyzing and improving cost to care ratios.