Department of Economics, University of California San Diego and NBER, United States.
Department of Economics, Hunter College in the City University of New York, United States.
J Health Econ. 2020 May;71:102304. doi: 10.1016/j.jhealeco.2020.102304. Epub 2020 Apr 1.
Primary care physicians (PCPs) provide frontline health care to patients in the U.S.; however, it is unclear how their practice styles affect patient care. In this paper, we estimate the long-lasting effects of PCP practice styles on patient health care utilization by focusing on Medicare patients affected by PCP relocations or retirements, which we refer to as "exits." Observing where patients receive care after these exits, we estimate event studies to compare patients who switch to PCPs with different practice style intensities. We find that PCPs have large effects on a range of aggregate utilization measures, including physician and outpatient spending and the number of diagnosed conditions. Moreover, we find that PCPs have large effects on the quality of care that patients receive, and that all of these effects persist for several years. Our results suggest that switching to higher-quality PCPs could significantly affect patients' longer-run health outcomes.
初级保健医生（PCP）为美国患者提供一线医疗保健服务；然而，他们的实践风格如何影响患者的护理尚不清楚。在本文中，我们通过关注受 PCP 搬迁或退休影响的 Medicare 患者（我们称之为“离职”），来估计 PCP 实践风格对患者医疗保健利用的长期影响。观察这些离职后患者在哪里接受护理，我们进行事件研究以比较转向不同实践风格强度的 PCP 的患者。我们发现 PCP 对一系列总体利用措施有很大影响，包括医生和门诊支出以及诊断出的病症数量。此外，我们发现 PCP 对患者接受的护理质量有很大影响，而且所有这些影响都持续了数年。我们的研究结果表明，转向更高质量的 PCP 可能会显著影响患者的长期健康结果。
