Effects of Physician Collaboration Network on Hospital Outcomes

Uddin, S. and Hossain, L.

Previous studies have documented the effect of collaboration among physicians on the effectiveness in delivering health services and in producing better patient outcomes. However, there is no systematic empirical study suggesting the underlying relationship between the collaboration network of physicians and its effect on hospital outcomes (i.e., hospitalization cost and readmission rate). In this study, we first propose a way to capture collaboration network among physicians from their visiting information to patients. Then we explore the effect of different attributes (i.e., degree centrality, betweenness centrality, and network density) of physician collaboration network (PCN) on hospital outcomes. Our results show that degree centrality (i.e., level of involvement) and network density (i.e., level of connectedness) of PCN are negatively correlated with hospitalization cost and readmission rate. In contrast, betweenness centrality (i.e., capacity to control the flow of information) is found positively correlated with hospitalization cost and readmission rate. In their respective hospitals, healthcare managers or administrators may follow our research findings to reduce cost and improve quality (i.e., lower readmission rate).

Cite as: Uddin, S. and Hossain, L. (2012). Effects of Physician Collaboration Network on Hospital Outcomes. In Proc. Australasian Workshop on Health Informatics and Knowledge Management (HIKM 2012) Melbourne, Australia. CRPIT, 129. Butler-Henderson, K. and Gray, K. Eds., ACS. 67-74

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