Time: 2024/10/18, 10:00-11:30

Title:  Standardization vs. Exploration: How Knowledge Spillovers Shape Healthcare Practices and Innovation

Venue: 106 Zhonghui Building

About the speaker:

Yinan Liu is an Assistant Professor in the School of Applied Economics at the Renmin University of China. She received her Ph.D. from the Department of Economics, University of Southern California. She is an applied microeconomist specializing in Health, Labor, and Public Economics. Her recent work examines how individuals respond to changes in government policies affecting healthcare supply, including the expansion of online healthcare services and the introduction of new medical technologies.

Abstract:

This study uses a difference-in-differences (DID) approach to analyze how knowledge spillovers, facilitated by China’s Urban Medical Alliance (UMA) policy, influence clinical practices and innovation. Leveraging a novel dataset of radiology reports and prescription records from over 310,000 patients across 13 secondary hospitals, we apply machine learning algorithms to match each radiology report with its closest reference from a leading tertiary hospital, quantifying convergence in prescribing practices. Our findings reveal that the UMA policy significantly improved standardization in clinical decision-making, reducing total medical spending through more consistent care. However, this standardization came at the cost of innovation, as secondary hospital doctors’ academic output and citation impact declined following the policy’s implementation. These results highlight the trade-off between achieving uniformity in healthcare practices and fostering creative exploration, offering insights for future policy design.