Working Paper: NBER ID: w6523
Authors: Sarah Feldman; David Scharfstein
Abstract: There is considerable evidence that patients that are treated by high volume physicians and hospitals have better health outcomes than patients treated by low volume physicians and hospitals. Thus, as an indirect measure of quality differences between managed care and traditional fee-for-service insurance, we compare the average provider volume of cancer patients covered by these two types of plans. We find that managed care patients tend to be treated by lower volume providers and that the magnitude of the differences varies by the particular cancer and managed care plan.
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JEL Codes: No JEL codes provided
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| managed care (I13) | lower volume physicians (I11) |
| provider volume (A30) | better health outcomes (I14) |
| managed care (I13) | lower quality of care (I14) |
| age, income, race (I24) | provider volume (A30) |
| managed care (I13) | provider volume (A30) |