The aim of this paper is to model a liberal profession, in this case physicians. We propose a model in which the physician acts in the same way as an agent who maximises his utility function subject to his budget constraint, while at the same time being able to affect his rate of remuneration....

Background We investigate access disparities in pharmaceutical care among German patients with type 2 diabetes, focusing on differences between public and private health insurance schemes. The primary objectives include investigating whether patients with private health insurance experience...

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...

Early twentieth century efforts to overhaul the quality of medical education in the United States (principally between 1905 and 1915 - the "Flexner Report Era") led to a steep decline in the number of medical schools and medical school graduates. In this paper, we examine the consequences of...

This paper analyzes the importance of doctor discretion in medical evaluations. Leveraging comprehensive administrative data and random assignment of doctors to evaluations in workers' compensation insurance, we identify the scope for doctor discretion in medical evaluations of injured workers...

This paper empirically analyzes the effects of mergers between complementary firms on competition and pricing. As these non-horizontal mergers have become more common, there is increasing interest in evaluating both potential efficiencies such as eliminating double marginalization and potential...

Background. In hospitals, decisions are often made under time pressure. There is, however, little evidence on how time pressure affects the quality of treatment and the documentation behavior of physicians. Setting. We implemented a controlled laboratory experiment with a healthcare framing in...

We use national physician-pair panel data to examine how switching electronic health record (EHR) developers affects out-of-network referrals from primary care physicians (PCPs) to specialists. We estimate a difference-in-differences model, exploiting changes in EHR developer adoption by...

We study how the threat of entry affects service quantity and quality of general prac- titioners (GPs). We leverage Germany’s needs-based primary care planning system, in which the likelihood of new GPs reduces by 20 percentage points when primary care coverage exceeds a cut-off. We compile...

Mental health disorders tend to emerge in childhood, with half starting by age 14. This makes early intervention important, but treatment rates are low, and antidepressant treatment for children remains controversial since an FDA warning in 2004 that highlighted adverse effects. Linking...