Emergency department waiting times and demand

Abstract: Where emergency hospital care is provided for free, emergency department waiting times act as a price mechanism to ration care where there is excess demand. Long emergency waiting times are a matter of public concern, and government policies in many countries aims to reduce waiting times. The effectiveness of these policies depends on the behavioural response of patients to higher or lower waiting times, the waiting time elasticity of demand. I estimate the waiting time elasticity of demand using data on 2.6 million emergency department presentations across 38 hospitals in Victoria, Australia. I use panel data regressions with instrumental variable approaches to estimate the model.