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Hospital Closures And Short-Run Change In Ambulance Call Times, Sookti Chaudhary, Alison F. Davis, Kenneth R. Troske, Suzanne Troske

Rural & Underserved Health Research Center Publications

We measure one aspect of how access to emergency care through ambulance services changes for patients when a hospital closes. We empirically estimate the time needed to transport a patient to an emergency department in an ambulance in the period immediately after the hospital closes. We find urban patients in zip codes where a hospital closes have a small change in transportation time, where rural patients average an estimated 15.7 additional minutes – a 46% increase compared to the year before the closure. This increase is primarily the result of an almost 100 percent increase in the time it takes …