Does Experience Make Better Doctors?

Juan Contreras, Beomsoo Kim () and Ignez M. Tristao ()
Additional contact information
Ignez M. Tristao: Congressional Budget Office

No 902, Discussion Paper Series from Institute of Economic Research, Korea University

Abstract: In this paper, we examine the ¡°learning-by-doing¡± hypothesis in medicine using a longitudinal census of laser in situ keratomileusis (LASIK) eye surgeries collected directly from patient charts. LASIK surgery has precise measures of presurgical condition and postsurgical outcomes. Unlike other types of surgery, the impact of unobservable underlying patient conditions on outcomes is minimal. Individual learning-bydoing is identified through observations of surgical outcomes over time based on the cumulative number of surgeries each surgeon has performed. Collective learning is identified separately through changes in a group adjustment rule determined jointly by all the surgeons through a structured internal review process. Our unique data set overcomes some of the measurement problems in patient outcomes encountered in other studies, and improves the possibility of identifying the impact of learning-by-doing separate from other effects. Our results do not support the hypothesis that the surgeon¡¯s individual learning improves outcomes, but we find strong evidence that experience accumulated by surgeons as a group in a clinic significantly improves outcomes.

Keywords: learning; experience; LASIK (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I10 I12 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 41 pages
Date: 2009
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-hea and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://econ.korea.ac.kr/~ri/WorkingPapers/w0902.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iek:wpaper:0902

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Paper Series from Institute of Economic Research, Korea University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kim, Jisoo ().