Patient-Physician Matching: Evidence from heart attacks in England
Heterogeneity in public service performance can lead some users to experience systematically worse outcomes than others. We study the extent to which the match between provider and user can improve outcomes, in which case improved matching provides a cost-effective means of reallocating scarce resources to increase welfare. Our context is emergency heart attack patients in England. Using 15 years of administrative data on the universe of such episodes we consider matching regimes based on (a) patient and physician gender and (b) patient need and physician experience. The outcomes we study are mortality and readmission. To implement our analysis we use the framework of Graham, Imbens and Ridder (2020) to identify the Average Match Function under the assumption of conditionally exogenous matching. Emergency heart attack patients are allocated based on doctor availability at the time of admission, hence we argue that the match is likely to be exogenous conditional on the hospital and date of admission. We then consider the impact of (feasible) counterfactual reallocations of patients across doctors, as well as counterfactual distributions of of doctor attributes (e.g., training more female doctors).
Speaker profile
Christiern Rose is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Economics at the University of Queensland. His expertise lies in identification and estimation of peer effects, high dimensional econometrics, and empirical work in health economics. Prior to his appointment at UQ, he completed his PhD at the University of Bristol in 2016, followed by a two year post-doc at Toulouse School of Economics.
Weekly seminar series
As part of our Centre's vibrant research culture, we host a weekly seminar series. Visiting and invited researchers present current research relating to the economics of health and wellbeing, and the healthcare sector. Visitors are welcome to join these sessions where discussion and debate is encouraged.
For further information on our seminar series, please contact Trong-Anh.Trinh@monash.edu.
Event Details
- Date:
- 14 May 2025 at 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm
- Venue:
- Caulfield campus, Building H, level 8, room H8.13
- Categories:
- CHE Seminar; General
Description
Heterogeneity in public service performance can lead some users to experience systematically worse outcomes than others. We study the extent to which the match between provider and user can improve outcomes, in which case improved matching provides a cost-effective means of reallocating scarce resources to increase welfare. Our context is emergency heart attack patients in England. Using 15 years of administrative data on the universe of such episodes we consider matching regimes based on (a) patient and physician gender and (b) patient need and physician experience. The outcomes we study are mortality and readmission. To implement our analysis we use the framework of Graham, Imbens and Ridder (2020) to identify the Average Match Function under the assumption of conditionally exogenous matching. Emergency heart attack patients are allocated based on doctor availability at the time of admission, hence we argue that the match is likely to be exogenous conditional on the hospital and date of admission. We then consider the impact of (feasible) counterfactual reallocations of patients across doctors, as well as counterfactual distributions of of doctor attributes (e.g., training more female doctors).
Speaker profile
Christiern Rose is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Economics at the University of Queensland. His expertise lies in identification and estimation of peer effects, high dimensional econometrics, and empirical work in health economics. Prior to his appointment at UQ, he completed his PhD at the University of Bristol in 2016, followed by a two year post-doc at Toulouse School of Economics.
Weekly seminar series
As part of our Centre's vibrant research culture, we host a weekly seminar series. Visiting and invited researchers present current research relating to the economics of health and wellbeing, and the healthcare sector. Visitors are welcome to join these sessions where discussion and debate is encouraged.
For further information on our seminar series, please contact Trong-Anh.Trinh@monash.edu.