Challenging Encounters and Within-Physician Practice Variability

Gabriel Chodick (), Yoav Goldstein (), Ity Shurtz and Dan Zeltzer
Additional contact information
Gabriel Chodick: Tel Aviv University
Yoav Goldstein: Tel Aviv University

No 15441, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We examine how physician decisions are impacted by difficult cases—encounters with newly diagnosed cancer patients. Using detailed administrative data, we compare primary care physicians' decisions in visits that occurred before and after difficult cases and matched comparison cases by the same physicians on other dates. Immediately following a difficult case, physicians increase referrals for common tests, including diagnostic tests unrelated to cancer. The effect lasts only for about an hour and is not driven by patient selection or schedule disruption. The results highlight difficult encounters as a source of variability in physician practice.

Keywords: primary care; practice variation; intra-rater reliability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D91 I1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 44 pages
Date: 2022-07
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published - published online in: Review of Economics and Statistics , 15 March 2023

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp15441.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:iza:izadps:dp15441

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().