Ian McCarthy and Shirley Cai
We examine the role of medical school environments in shaping physicians’ later treatment decisions, focusing on a specific subset of cardiology in which physician discretion is particularly salient and separate from patient need.
Ian McCarthy, Shirley Cai, Pablo Estrada, and Jillian Wilkins
Focusing on PCPs who enter or relocate to a new market, we study the determinants of initial PCP–specialist networks using the universe of 2010–2018 Medicare fee-for-service claims across three distinct specialty areas: orthopedic surgery, cardiology, and dermatology. A network-formation model with two-sided fixed effects shows that sharing a common practice is the dominant factor in forming initial referral links across all three specialties, followed by geographic proximity and relatively minor effects from homophily across various demographic characteristics.