Strategic Complements or Substitutes? The Case of Adopting Health Information Technology by U.S. Hospitals
122 Pages Posted: 16 Jan 2018 Last revised: 10 Feb 2021
Date Written: January 25, 2019
Abstract
This paper explores the adoption choice of electronic medical records by U.S. hospitals, which could exhibit strategic complements or substitutes. I find complementarities in adoption through a reduced-form analysis with instruments for unobserved market characteristics. I further develop a dynamic oligopoly model to allow for strategic timing incentives that are missing in the static model. Adopting a dominant local vendor could increase per-period profits from adoption by 9.2% over choosing a marginal vendor. A counterfactual analysis suggests an incentive program rewarding coordination, not just adoption, is more effective in achieving interoperability, especially before the widespread adoption of the technology.
Keywords: Strategic complements/substitutes, technology adoption, HITECH Act, structural estimation
JEL Classification: I11, I18, L13, L15, O33
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation