Understanding Doctor Decision Making: The Case of Depression Treatment
利用患者索赔数据，发现使用更广泛药物组合的医生能带来更好疗效，但违反治疗指南时效果变差；模型表明诊断技能影响探索与利用的权衡。
Treatment for depression is complex, requiring decisions that may involve trade‐offs between exploiting treatments with the highest expected value and experimenting with treatments with higher possible payoffs. Using patient claims data, we show that among skilled doctors, using a broader portfolio of drugs predicts better patient outcomes, except in cases where doctors' decisions violate loose professional guidelines. We introduce a behavioral model of decision making guided by our empirical observations. The model's novel feature is that the trade‐off between exploitation and experimentation depends on the doctor's diagnostic skill. The model predicts that higher diagnostic skill leads to greater diversity in drug choice and better matching of drugs to patients even among doctors with the same initial beliefs regarding drug effectiveness. Consistent with the finding that guideline violations predict poorer patient outcomes, simulations of the model suggest that increasing the number of possible drug choices can lower performance.