Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
Physician scorecards have been a highly touted means to improve healthcare quality. One example is NY state’s coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) Surgery Reporting System. One side effect of scorecards is that surgeons may choose to operate on healthier patients in order to maximize their scorecard grade. In fact, over 60 percent of NY cardiothoracic…
In a recent NBER working paper (“Tradeoffs“), authors Christopher Afendulis and Daniel Kessler, pose an interesting question: should the physician who is diagnosing you also be the one who provides treatment? On the one hand, a physician who both diagnoses and provides treatment has a financial incentive to recommend to the patient that they should…
Today I will be briefly be reviewing four recent articles which examine how physician payment methods affect the amount of medical service provision. GP reimbursement in Ireland Madden, Nolan and Nolan (Health Econ 2005) use a quasi-experimental framework to see how changing physician compensation affects the number of doctors visits. In Ireland approximately 30% of…
If my October 10th post did not satiate your desire for knowledge regarding referrals, today I give you even more information. Franks, Zwanziger, Mooney and Sorbero examine a large Rochester, NY Independent Practitioner Association (IPA). The authors find a mean patient referred/patients seen/year of 0.37. The data show that referral rates remain very stable by physician over time, likely…
Years ago, when someone needed care from a doctor they visited the physician directly whether they were a general practitioner or a specialist. Nowadays, it is rarer for patients to visit a specialist without a referral. The typical referral comes from a primary care physician, but it is also common for a specialist to refer…