Professor Pengfei Guo, from the Department
of Management Sciences, along with co-authors,
has studied the behaviour known as "doctor
shopping," which occurs when a patient disagrees
with a doctor's diagnosis and seeks multiple opinions
without referrals. The study aims to understand why
patients engage in this behaviour and determine
the best decisions they can make when doctor
shopping. The research shows that after each visit
to a doctor, patients adjust their beliefs about their
health based on new information. The decision to
continue doctor shopping is influenced by factors
such as how accurate the diagnosis is, the relative
value of identifying a severely ill patient, and the cost
of each visit. The study also examines the impact of
doctor shopping on the overall well-being of society.
This is assessed from two perspectives: whether
doctor shopping improves the accuracy of diagnosing
a patient's health condition and whether it helps
alleviate patients' anxiety. The findings suggest
that allowing patients to doctor shop can lead to
increased congestion in the healthcare system.
However, it can also benefit patients who choose
to engage in this behaviour by providing them with
better outcomes. There is a certain threshold of
accuracy for diagnoses, above which doctor shopping
reduces overall welfare and below which it improves
welfare. This threshold increases as patients become
more pessimistic or have diverse initial perceptions
of their illness. The objective welfare maximization
prefers a higher doctor shopping rate than the
subjective welfare maximization only when the value
of identifying a severely ill patient is high enough.
This finding helps explain why doctor shopping is
often encouraged for critical illnesses like cancer.
Huang, Fengfeng; Guo, Pengfei; Wang, Yulan.
"Modeling patients' illness perception and
equilibrium analysis of their doctor shopping
behaviour." March 2022; In: Production and
Operations Management. Vol. 31, No. 3, pp. 1216-1234
Reference:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/poms.13606
