Fact of the Week: Broadband Adoption Explains 12 Percent of the Reduction in Medicare Patients’ Mortality

Source: Jessica Van Parys and Zach Y. Brown, “Broadband Internet Access and Health Outcomes: Patient and Provider Responses in Medicare,” NBER Working Paper Series, no. w31579 (August 2023).

Commentary: In an August 2023 working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research, Jessica Van Parys and Zach Y. Brown analyzed the effects of broadband internet access to improvement in health outcomes. The authors measured health outcomes by looking at 30-day rates for mortality and for readmission. The authors used data for all U.S. ZIP codes between 1999 and 2008 from the Federal Communications Commission and the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The study looked specifically at mortality and readmission rates for joint replacements and for colonoscopies, as those procedures are some of the most common elective procedures among the Medicare population. The authors also looked at the mortality rates for heart attacks and for strokes. Their findings point to the critical role that internet access plays in providing valuable health information to patients.

The study focused mainly on ZIP Codes that went from having no broadband providers in 1999 to having four or more providers in 2008. In terms of readmission rates, when a ZIP Code went from having no providers in 1999 to four or more providers in 2008, the probability of readmission for joint replacement decreased by 5.7 percent. Similarly, hospitalizations for colonoscopy complications were 6.4 percent lower in ZIP Codes with four or more providers than when it had no providers. Additionally, the 30-day readmission and mortality rates for heart attack and stroke patients were 1 percent lower in ZIP Codes with four or more providers than in those with no providers.

The study concluded that broadband expansion explained 12 percent of the overall reduction in the mortality and readmission rates over the period studied. In particular, the authors explain that the primary driver of health improvement was the effect of internet access on patient demand. That is, once patients had access to online information about hospital and healthcare provider quality, they began to seek out hospitals with lower rates of readmission and other complications.