Physician Health Management Skills and Patient Outcomes

Abstract

A host of different factors affect health and longevity, ranging from genetic endowments to public policy. Physicians have a substantial influence on patients' health and health-related costs, but we know little about the extent of this influence beyond clinical decisions such as adequate diagnosis and treatment. This paper demonstrates that the health management styles of primary care physicians significantly affect the health outcomes of their patients. Using data on the population of statin users in Denmark and matching patients to their primary care physicians, we show that the physician's ability to facilitate adherence with prescription medications has significant positive effects on patient outcomes and health costs even after controlling for observable and unobservable patient characteristics. Policy interventions aimed at improving this aspect of physicians' health management styles have important implications for patient outcomes and health care costs.

Discontinuity in care: Practice closures among primary care providers and patient health care utilization

“…Laird and Nielsen (2016), for example, relate the propensity of PCPs to prescribe prescription drugs to labor supply, while Koulayev et al (2017) document the role of the PCPs in drug adherence. More recently, Kwok (2018) and Fadlon and Van Parys (2019) show that switching to a high spending primary care provider leads to increases in primary care utilization and Simeonova et al (2020) investigate the impact of providers on hospitalizations and health care costs. More broadly, a couple of Norwegian studies provide evidence that a shift in primary care physician, for example due to physician retirement, leads to changes in claims for sick pay and disability benefits (Markussen et al, 2013) and work absenteeism (Dale-Olsen and Godøy, 2018).…”

Invisible Wounds: Health and Well-Being Impacts of Mental Disorder Disability Compensation on Veterans

“…Increased engagement and take-up of preventive care may be indicative of improved patientclinician communication and trust (Alsan et al, 2019;Koulayev et al, 2017;Simeonova et al, 2020). We have multiple pieces of evidence to support this interpretation.…”

Luck of the Draw: The Causal Effect of Physicians on Birth Outcomes

“…Firstly, our identification strategy and the availability of granular administrative records allow us to measure the causal impact of more-skilled physicians on health outcomes. Previous literature has documented the relationships between health outcomes and physicians' diagnosis skills (Currie and MacLeod, 2020), physicians' teams (Chen, 2021), healthcare access (Almond et al, 2010;Finkelstein, Taubman, Wright, Bernstein, Gruber, Neuse, Allen, Baicker, and Group, 2012), 11 healthcare costs (Alsan, Garrick, and Graziani, 2019;Clemens and Gottlieb, 2014;Molitor, 2018), quality of physicians' academic institutions (Doyle et al, 2010), physicians' performance on qualifying examinations (Carrera, Goldman, Joyce, and Sood, 2018;Tamblyn, Abrahamowicz, Dauphinee, Hanley, Norcini, Girard, Grand'Maison, and Brailovsky, 2002;Wenghofer, Klass, Abrahamowicz, Dauphinee, Jacques, Smee, Blackmore, Winslade, Reidel, Bartman, et al, 2009), physicians' competence (Das, Holla, Mohpal, and Muralidharan, 2016) 12 , physicians' ability to facilitate adherence to prescription medications (Iizuka, 2012;Simeonova, Skipper, and Thingholm, 2020), physicians' fees and payment for performance (Basinga, Gertler, Binagwaho, Soucat, Sturdy, and Vermeersch, 2011;Ho and Pakes, 2014a,1), general practitioners and specialists (Baicker and Chandra, 2004), and physicians' communication (Curtis, Cai, Wade, Stolshek, Adams, Balasubramanian, Viswanathan, and Kallich, 2013). To our knowledge, this paper is the first to document experimental evidence on the impact of more skilled physicians on health outcomes.…”