The influences of peers on outpatient physicians’ diagnostic scan decision-making

Outpatient physicians’ diagnostic scan decision-making is not only related to the quality of medical diagnosis but also connected with the operations efficiency of the hospital. Identifying and understanding how outpatient physicians react to their peers in diagnostic scan decisions is an important economics issue that can help hospitals improve their operations effectiveness. Based on the data collected from a Chinese 3A Grade hospital, we reveal that peers have negative influences on outpatient physicians in deciding the number of scan orders during a shift. Relative to male physicians, female physicians are more likely to be influenced by their peers. Moreover, physicians in the surgical medicine departments are more sensitive to peers regarding decisions on scan orders, relative to those in the internal medicine departments. We further find that several conventional social interaction factors, including learning, status, and homophily, do not act on peer influence. While resource spillover caused by shared scan resource constraints, patient-volume and physician-volume can enlarge the negative peer influence, suggesting that resource spillover should be a significant driving force of the peer influence in deciding the number of scan orders. Finally, theoretical and management implications are discussed.