Does Hospital Reputation Infl uence the Choice of Hospital ? # 516

A number of recent empirical studies document signifi cant eff ects of in-patient care quality indicators on the choice of hospital. These studies use either objective quality indicators based on quantitative fi gures, or if subjective reputation scores are used, scores based on the opinion of hospital market insiders. We contribute to the current debate by using a subjective reputation score resorting to patient perceptions and examine its impact on the choice of hospital of patients undergoing a coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) in Germany. Our results show that 76% of the patients value hospital reputation positively when choosing a hospital. Moreover, we fi nd evidence for a trade-off between hospital reputation and travel time, i.e. a signifi cant share of patients is willing to accept additional travel time to get a treatment in a hospital with better reputation. The average marginal eff ect for hospital reputation confi rms this fi nding, since the magnitude of the eff ect strengthens for higher thresholds of travel time. The results are robust for diff erent degrees of co-morbidities and admission status. JEL Classifi cation: C25, D12, I11