Category : Manuscript

Objective: To assess whether connections between physicians based on shared patients in administrative data correspond with professional relationships between physicians. Data Sources/Study Setting: Survey of physicians affiliated with a large academic and community physicians’ organization and 2006 Medicare data from a 100 percent sample of patients in the Boston Hospital referral region. http://humannaturelab.net/wp-content/themes/human-nature-lab/media/pdf/publications/articles/122.pdf

Background: There is substantial variation in the cost and intensity of care delivered by US hospitals. We assessed how the structure of patient-sharing networks of physicians affiliated with hospitals might contribute to this variation. http://humannaturelab.net/wp-content/themes/human-nature-lab/media/pdf/publications/articles/128.pdf

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