Doctor Decision Making and Patient Outcomes

Janet Currie, W. Bentley Macleod () and Kate Musen

No 32788, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Doctors often treat similar patients differently, which affects health outcomes and medical spending. We assess the recent literature on doctor decision making through the lens of a model that incorporates diagnostic and procedural skills, beliefs, incentives, and differences in patient pools. Decision making is affected by beliefs, training, experience, peer effects, financial incentives, and time constraints. Interventions to improve decision making include providing information, guidelines, and technologies like electronic medical records and algorithmic decision tools. Economists have made progress in understanding doctor decision making, but applications of that knowledge to improving health care are still limited.

JEL-codes: I11 I12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
Note: EH
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w32788.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:nbr:nberwo:32788

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w32788

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().