The last ten years have seen the introduction of price shopping into medical markets which were previously dominated by price insensitive consumers. Price shopping has been facilitated by the advent of the Preferred Provider Organization (PPO), which coordinates the demand of a large number of...

Individuals with common mental disorders (CMDs) such as depression and anxiety frequently have co-occurring long-term physical health conditions (LTCs) and this co-occurrence is associated with higher hospital utilisation. Psychological treatment for CMDs may reduce healthcare utilisation...

In response to unsustainable growth in health care spending, there is enormous interest in reforming the payment system to “pay for quality instead of quantity.” While quality measures are crucial to such reforms, they face major criticisms largely over the potential failure of risk...

We estimate the extent of defensive medicine by physicians, embracing the no-liability counterfactual made possible by the structure of liability rules in the Military Heath System. Active-duty patients seeking treatment from military facilities cannot sue for harms resulting from negligent...

Endogenous patient sorting across hospitals can confound performance comparisons. This paper provides a new lens to compare hospital performance for emergency patients: plausibly exogenous variation in ambulance-company assignment. Ambulances are effectively randomly assigned to patients in the...

Concerns over the impacts of hospital strikes on patient welfare led to substantial delay in the ability of hospitals to unionize. Once allowed, hospitals unionized rapidly and now represent one of the largest union sectors of the U.S. economy. Were the original fears of harmful hospital strikes...