Tradeoffs from Integrating Diagnosis and Treatment in Markets for Health Care
研究老年冠心病患者由能同时提供诊断和手术治疗的“整合型”心脏病专家诊治，相比非整合型专家，导致医疗支出更高但健康结果相似，并分解了其中的三种效应。
To identify the important tradeoffs in consulting a single expert for both diagnosis and treatment, we examine the costs and health outcomes of elderly Medicare beneficiaries with coronary artery disease. We compare the empirical consequences of diagnosis by cardiologists who can provide surgical treatment – “integrated” cardiologists – to the consequences of diagnosis by a nonintegrated cardiologist. Diagnosis by an integrated cardiologist leads, on net, to higher health spending but similar health outcomes. The net effect contains three components: reduced spending and improved outcomes from better allocation of patients to surgical treatment options; increased spending conditional on treatment option; and worse outcomes from poorer provision of nonsurgical care.