Measuring hospital spatial wingspan by using a discrete choice model with utility-threshold

Policy makers increasingly rely on hospital competition to incentivize patients to choose high-value care. Travel distance is one of the most important drivers of patients’ decision. The paper presents a method to numerically measure, for a given hospital, the distance beyond which no patient is expected to choose the hospital for treatment by using a new approach in discrete choice models. To illustrate, we compared 3 hospitals attractiveness related to this distance for asthma patients admissions in 2009 in Hérault (France), showing, as expected, CHU Montpellier is the one with the most important spatial wingspan. For estimation, Monte Carlo Markov Chain (MCMC) methods are used.