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Comparative Productivity Among Different Sized Physician Practices in Rural Washington

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 May 2017

Sam Cordes*
Affiliation:
Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology, The Pennsylvania State University
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Extract

Students of our nation's medical care system generally express particular concern over the availability or lack of availability of physician services in rural areas. This concern is not without statistical foundation. In 1969 the nation's most urbanized counties (5,000,000 inhabitants or more) had approximately five times as many actively-practicing private physicians per 100,000 population as did the most rural counties (less than 10,000 inhabitants) [1]. In view of this situation a number of measures designed to increase the rural supply of physician services are being proposed. In general, these measures can be categorized into (1) those designed to increase the size of the resource base used in producing physician services and (2) those designed to reorganize the existant resource base in hopes of increasing resource productivity.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Northeastern Agricultural and Resource Economics Association 

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Footnotes

1/

The author gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Washington State University Agricultural Experiment Station and the professional assistance of Dr. Paul W. Barkley, Washington State University, in making this research effort possible.

References

[1] Haug, J. N. and Roback, G. A., Distribution of Physicians, Hospitals, and Hospital Beds in the U. S., 1969, Vol. 1, Chicago: American Medical Association, 1970.Google Scholar
[2] Bailey, Richard M., “Economies of Scale in Medical Practice,” in Empirical Studies in Health Economics, ed. Klarman, Herbert E., Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 1970, p. 255273.Google Scholar