“Altruistic” doctors who prioritize patient care over income and profit achieve dramatically better health outcomes with older patients, a finding that has powerful implications for U.S. health care systems and policies, according to a new study co-authored at UC Berkeley.
The research, published today in JAMA Health Forum, found that when thousands of Medicare patients were treated by such doctors, they were far less likely to need preventable hospital admissions and emergency room visits. In addition, the patients’ annual medical payments were nearly 10% lower on average.
“The bottom line is that the more altruistic doctors are actually providing better medical care,” said co-author Shachar Kariv, a Berkeley theoretical economist. “This means that we can, on the one hand, really improve medical care, and on the other hand pay less for it — if doctors are altruistic.
“Given that medical expenses are the single biggest fraction of U.S. gross domestic product, the implications are absolutely enormous.”