Hospital production and inverse care law in Argentina

Abstract

This paper studies the production of outpatient and inpatient care in public hospitals in Argentina. This is a descriptive and correlational study that uses official data analyzed through multivariated statistical techniques and suggests three related facts. First, health care is not geographically homogeneous. Second, geographic per capita income per capita is important for outpatient care and age population pyramid in inpatient care. Third, the hypothesis stating that individuals with greater needs use less health care is confirmed. Thus, the inverse health care law rules in Argentina.