MANUSCRIPT: Reasons for Choice of Referral Physician Among Primary Care and Specialist Physicians
BACKGROUND: Specialty referral patterns can affect health care costs as well as clinical outcomes. For a given clinical problem, referring physicians usually have a choice of several physicians to whom they can refer. Once the decision to refer is made, the choice of individual physician may have important downstream effects. OBJECTIVE: To examine the reasons why primary care and specialist physicians choose certain specific colleagues to refer to and how those reasons differ by specialty.
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