Physician human capital, healthcare accessibility, and mismatch of healthcare resources

Abstract

China's multilevel medical education system generates tremendous physician human capital heterogeneity. This paper attempts to take advantage of the differences level of doctors' human capital to reveal the relationship between healthcare service mismatch and doctors' human capital using the DRGs data of a province in China. This paper found that: first, a higher level of physician human capital (PHC) in hospitals significantly increases the mismatch of medical services; second, there is a complementary effect between doctors' human capital and medical care accessibility, which significantly increases the degree of healthcare service mismatch, and these conclusions still hold after controlling the endogeneity and a series of robustness tests. Third, the mismatch effect is more significant in surgery than that of in internal medicine departments and the mismatch effect is stronger in county hospitals than that of provincial hospitals. Therefore, both patients' great confidence in superior medical services and the heterogeneity of PHC contribute to the mismatch of medical services in China.