Volume 23, Number 3 (Summer) 1988
Brown, Douglas M. 1988. "Do Physicians Underutilize Aides?" Journal of Human Resources 23(3):342-355.
This paper utilizes a large national data set to retest the result found by Reinhardt that office-based physicians underutilize aides. Employing the transcendental-exponential form of the production function, it finds that groups are more productive than solos and that physicians typically do not use aides efficiently. Specifically, except for physician assistants used groups, nonnurse aides were found to be overemployed. The policy implications are that for physicians to produce more efficiently, they must use fewer secretarial, administrative, and technical hours. A trend in this direction is already in evidence.
The author is an associate professor of economics at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. The author began this research while he was a visiting scholar at the National Bureau of Economic Research West, Stanford, and was partially funded by the Health Care Financing Administration, Department of Health and Human Services. He would like to thank two anonymous referees and M. Daniel Westbrook for helpful comments on earlier drafts. He also benefited from discussions with Louis Garrison, Harvey Lapan, and Tom MaCurdy. He alone is responsible for any remaining errors.
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