The gift of a lifetime: The hospital, modern medicine, and mortality
- The American Economic Review
- 114(7), Jul, 2024: p.2201-2238
This paper explores the transformative role of hospitals and modern medicine in shaping mortality outcomes. It situates hospitals as central institutions in the evolution of public health, highlighting their capacity to deliver life-saving interventions and redefine the relationship between medical practice and patient survival. The study examines how advances in modern medicine, coupled with institutional expansion, contributed to declining mortality rates and reshaped societal expectations of health care. By framing hospitals as both medical and social institutions, the paper underscores their dual role in improving survival and in structuring the broader landscape of health systems and medical sociology. Authors explore how access to modern hospitals and medicine affects mortality by leveraging efforts of the Duke Endowment to modernize hospitals in the early twentieth century. The Endowment helped communities build and expand hospitals, obtain state-of-the-art medical technology, attract qualified medical personnel, and refine management practices. We find that Duke support increased the size and quality of the medical sector, fostering growth in not-for-profit hospitals and high-quality physicians. Duke funding reduced both infant mortality—with larger effects for Black infants than White infants—and long-run mortality. Finally, we find that communities aided by Duke benefited more from medical innovations.- Reproduced
Public Health, Hospitals, Modern Medicine, Mortality, Medical History, Health Care Institutions, Patient Survival, Medical Sociology, Health Systems, Institutional Development