The nature of surgeon human capital depreciation

Jason Hockenberry and Lorens A. Helmchen

Journal of Health Economics, 2014, vol. 37, issue C, 70-80

Abstract: To test how practice interruptions affect worker productivity, we estimate how temporal breaks affect surgeons’ performance of coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG). Examining 188 surgeons who performed 56,315 CABG surgeries in Pennsylvania between 2006 and 2010, we find that a surgeon's additional day away from the operating room raised patients’ inpatient mortality by up to 0.067 percentage points (2.4% relative effect) but reduced total hospitalization costs by up to 0.59 percentage points. Among emergent patients treated by high-volume providers, where temporal distance is most plausibly exogenous, an additional day away raised mortality risk by 0.398 percentage points (11.4% relative effect) but reduced cost by up to 1.4 percentage points. This is consistent with the hypothesis that as temporal distance increases, surgeons are less likely to recognize and address life-threatening complications. Our estimates imply additional intraprocedural treatment intensity has a cost per life-year preserved of $7871–18,500, well within conventional cost-effectiveness cutoffs.

Keywords: Human capital; Productivity; Skill depreciation; Returns to medical spending (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I10 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

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Working Paper: The Nature of Surgeon Human Capital Depreciation (2014)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jhecon:v:37:y:2014:i:c:p:70-80

DOI: 10.1016/j.jhealeco.2014.06.001

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