Diffusion of surgical technology. An exploratory study.

The study presents an empirical analysis of the diffusion patterns of five surgical procedures. Roles of payer mix, regulatory policies, physician diffusion, competition among hospitals, and various hospital characteristics such as size and the spread of technologies are examined. The principal data base is a time series cross-section of 521 hospitals based on discharge abstracts sent to the Commission on Professional and Hospital Activities. Results on the whole are consistent with a framework used to study innovations in other contexts in which the decisions of whether to innovate and timing depend on anticipated streams of returns and cost. Innovation tends to be more likely to occur in markets in which the more generous payers predominate. But the marginal effects of payer mix are small compared to effects of location and hospital characteristics, such as size and teaching status. Hospital rate-setting sometimes retarded diffusion. Certificate of need programs did not.