新型コロナウイルス感染症パンデミックから見る公立病院の役割

抄録

This paper analyzes the impact of public hospitals on the safety net in community health care from both theoretical and empirical perspectives. In particular, the relationship between the existence of public hospitals and mortality from COVID-19 was examined through regression analysis. We show that the higher the proportion of public hospitals in a region, the lower the mortality rate from COVID-19. This result implies that public hospitals have a regional safety net for infectious diseases. Then, we examine the relationship between the safety net for infectious diseases of public hospitals, subsidies to public hospitals, and public hospital reform. We show that amount of subsidies is unrelated to the safety-net function, whereas the function of public hospitals tends to be weaker where privatization is proactive.