The Causal Effect of High-Quality Physician-Patient Relationships on Healthcare Costs and Outcomes: Differences by Race/Ethnicity and the Effect of Racial/Ethnic Concordance
Timothy Brown, Professor
Public Health
Closed. This professor is continuing with Fall 2024 apprentices on this project; no new apprentices needed for Spring 2025.
Large racial/ethnic disparities exist in medical care. Attenuation or removal of these disparities requires a rigorous understanding of the relevant underlying mechanisms. One such mechanism is high-quality physician-patient relationships. High-quality physician-patient relationships are associated with improved health outcomes and lower costs. However, such relationships appear to vary by the race/ethnicity of the patient and whether or not there is racial/ethnic concordance in the physician-patient relationship. To date, no studies have been performed that address these issues simultaneously using methods that allow for causal interpretation applied to data that have external validity at the national level.
This study covers each of these issues by asking the following questions: (1) Does the quality of physician-patient relationships exert a positive/negative effect on health and/or cost outcomes that systematically varies by the race/ethnicity of the patient and are any of these impacts altered if there is racial/ethnic concordance between the physician and patient; (2) To what extent would policies altering the quality of physician-patient relationships and/or racial/ ethnic concordance narrow disparities in health and/or cost outcomes; and (3) What is the business case for reducing racial/ethnic disparities in outcomes?
Role: 1. A. Task: Literature review of physician-patient racial/ethnic concordance medical/cost outcome studies. B. Learning outcome: understanding how to do literature reviews and becoming an expert on this particular topic.
2. A. Task: Literature review of physician-patient relationships and medical/cost outcomes. B. Learning outcome: understanding how to do literature reviews and becoming an expert on this particular topic.
3. A. Task: Literature review on the placebo-nocebo effect in physician-patient relationships. B. Learning outcome: understanding how to do literature reviews and becoming an expert on this particular topic.
4. A. Task: Data analysis of Medical Expenditure Panel Study using Stata. B. Learning outcome: being able to understand sophisticated econometric analyses.
5. A. Task: Preparing presentations. B. Learning outcome: learning how to prepare persuasive presentations for webinars and conferences.
6. A. Task: Preparing report and manuscripts. B. Learning outcome: learning how to prepare peer-reviewed publication with possible coauthorship possible depending on the role played in the project.
Qualifications: 1. Skills Needed.
A. Literature review skills;
B. Data analysis skills (Stata preferred, but this can be learned if the student knows another statistical analysis package).
C. Presentation skills.
D. Writing skills. Note: not every student who applies needs to have all of the previous skills--but at least one skill is needed. Public health, economics, and data science majors preferred, but smart students from any major will be considered.
2. Hours: 8-10 hours per week (so you could select 6-8 hours or 9-11 hours). This is flexible depending on how many students express interest.
3. This project will run from Fall 2021 through Spring 2022.
Hours: 9-11 hrs
Off-Campus Research Site: Meetings will take place on campus (or via Zoom if the pandemic requires this). Actual research will take place either on your personal computer or in my data lab as needed.
Biological & Health Sciences