Doing More with Less: Predicting Primary Care Provider Effectiveness

Janet Currie and Jonathan Zhang
Additional contact information
Janet Currie: Princeton University
Jonathan Zhang: Duke University and Veterans Health Administration

The Review of Economics and Statistics, 2025, vol. 107, issue 2, 289-305

Abstract: We use data from the Veterans Administration to examine the efficacy of primary care providers (PCPs). Leveraging quasi-random assignment of veterans to PCPs, we measure effectiveness using ambulatory care sensitive conditions (ACSC) and hospitalizations/emergency department (ED) visits for mental health or circulatory conditions. PCPs’ variation along these dimensions predicts future outcomes. For example, a 1 standard deviation improvement in mental health effectiveness reduces patient risk of death by 3.8% and lowers costs by 4.4% over the next three years. More effective PCPs do more with less: their patients have fewer primary care visits, specialist referrals, lab panels, or imaging tests.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1162/rest_a_01290

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:tpr:restat:v:107:y:2025:i:2:p:289-305

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://mitpressjour ... rnal/?issn=0034-6535

Access Statistics for this article

The Review of Economics and Statistics is currently edited by Pierre Azoulay, Olivier Coibion, Will Dobbie, Raymond Fisman, Benjamin R. Handel, Brian A. Jacob, Kareen Rozen, Xiaoxia Shi, Tavneet Suri and Yi Xu

More articles in The Review of Economics and Statistics from MIT Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by The MIT Press ().