Nursing Home Shortage and Hospital Bed-blocking
A hospital stay dramatically increases the risk that an elderly person will require long-term care. Due to increasing staff shortages in German nursing homes, patients who require nursing home care directly after a hospital stay often struggle to find a nursing home bed. This paper studies how hospital length of stay differs between care dependent individuals requiring and not requiring a nursing home bed, controlling for potential health differences between these groups. We find that the need for a nursing home bed is associated with approximately a 40% increase in length of stay. Since hospital care is much more expensive than nursing home care, bed-blocking is not only a concern for the patients but also for public policy.