Expert Patients’ Use of Avoidable Health Care

Pragya Kakani, Simone Matecna and Amitabh Chandra

No 33573, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We measure whether expert patients – those trained as physicians and nurses – have fewer emergency department visits and the reasons for these differences. Relative to similar patients physicians and nurses had 19.8% and 5.1% fewer ED visits, principally due to fewer avoidable visits. The differences in avoidable visits between physicians and other patients were largest for diagnoses commonly requiring prescriptions, which physicians often self-prescribed. Our results suggest that improving access to prescriptions for acute symptoms, more than improving patient education, may reduce avoidable health care.

JEL-codes: I0 I10 I11 I12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-03
Note: CH EH
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