3:30 pm - 4:30 pm
640 General Services Building, 640 GSB, Edmonton
Speaker: Dr Bruno Wichmann, University of Alberta, Faculty of ALES, Resource Economics & Environmental Sociology.
Title: “Using machine learning to estimate cross-patient spillover effects of disease-specific interventions”, by Bruno Wichmann and Roberta Wichmann.
Location: 640 General Services Building
Abstract: We develop an empirical model to study cross-patient spillover effects of disease-specific interventions. The model uses nonparametric functions in partially linear regressions that maintain the parametric simplicity of spillover effects while allowing for both health outcomes and the propensity to receive intervention to be influenced by supply and demand shifters in a complex and unknown manner. We apply the model to data from 74 hospitals in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to examine effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the performance of hospitals when offering intensive care to non-COVID patients. We find that, after the admission of the first COVID-19 patient, ICU mortality of adult non-COVID patients increases by 4.8 percentage points (p<0.01) from a pre-COVID baseline of 28.3%. For surviving adult (pediatric) non-COVID patients, length of stay increases by 0.871 (1.289) days (p<0.01 for both estimates), which corresponds to a 13% (11%) increase from pre-pandemic baselines. These estimates suggest that health effects of the COVID-19 crisis spill over into the population of non-COVID patients.
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