IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/medema/v11y1991i2p125-130.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Physicians' Risk Attitudes, Laboratory Usage, and Referral Decisions

Author

Listed:
  • David R. Holtgrave
  • Frank Lawler
  • Stephen J. Spann

Abstract

Individual differences in physicians' laboratory use and referral rates are important aspects of practice variation that have real financial and health consequences. A way to explain these differences is needed. In this empirical study, physicians' risk attitudes (measured on a multidimensional scale) are shown to be good predictors of use rates for certain specific laboratory procedures, but not good predictors of physicians' referral rates. A 15-item survey form that measured risk-taking attitudes in the financial, health, social, and ethical domains was administered to all clinical faculty at an academic family practice center ( n = 14). Each physician's utilization rates for the 17 most frequently ordered laboratory procedures were calculated for all patient visits for one calendar year. Overall referral rates were calculated for the same period. Physicians' risk attitudes (12 completed the survey) accounted for over 50% of the variance for several of the laboratory procedures. For example, the rank-order correlation between the complete blood count utilization rate and a Likert-scale item meas uring physicians' propensity to take physical risks was 0.91 (p

Suggested Citation

  • David R. Holtgrave & Frank Lawler & Stephen J. Spann, 1991. "Physicians' Risk Attitudes, Laboratory Usage, and Referral Decisions," Medical Decision Making, , vol. 11(2), pages 125-130, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:medema:v:11:y:1991:i:2:p:125-130
    DOI: 10.1177/0272989X9101100210
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0272989X9101100210
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0272989X9101100210?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Stephen D. Nightingale, 1987. "Risk Preference and Laboratory Use," Medical Decision Making, , vol. 7(3), pages 168-172, August.
    2. Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky, 2013. "Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Leonard C MacLean & William T Ziemba (ed.), HANDBOOK OF THE FUNDAMENTALS OF FINANCIAL DECISION MAKING Part I, chapter 6, pages 99-127, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    3. Epstein, A.M. & Begg, C.B. & McNeil, B.J., 1984. "The effects of physicians' training and personality on test ordering for ambulatory patients," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 74(11), pages 1271-1273.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Galizzi, Matteo M. & Miraldo, Marisa & Stavropoulou, Charitini & van der Pol, Marjon, 2016. "Doctor–patient differences in risk and time preferences: A field experiment," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 171-182.
    2. Sophie Massin & Antoine Nebout & Bruno Ventelou, 2018. "Predicting medical practices using various risk attitude measures," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 19(6), pages 843-860, July.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. N/A, 1987. "Editorials," Medical Decision Making, , vol. 7(3), pages 136-137, August.
    2. Kuhberger, Anton, 1998. "The Influence of Framing on Risky Decisions: A Meta-analysis," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 75(1), pages 23-55, July.
    3. Kuhberger, Anton & Schulte-Mecklenbeck, Michael & Perner, Josef, 1999. "The Effects of Framing, Reflection, Probability, and Payoff on Risk Preference in Choice Tasks, ," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 78(3), pages 204-231, June.
    4. Seow Eng Ong & Davin Wang & Calvin Chua, 2023. "Disruptive Innovation and Real Estate Agency: The Disruptee Strikes Back," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 67(2), pages 287-317, August.
    5. Herrmann, Tabea & Hübler, Olaf & Menkhoff, Lukas & Schmidt, Ulrich, 2016. "Allais for the poor," Kiel Working Papers 2036, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    6. Christiane Goodfellow & Dirk Schiereck & Steffen Wippler, 2013. "Are behavioural finance equity funds a superior investment? A note on fund performance and market efficiency," Journal of Asset Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 14(2), pages 111-119, April.
    7. Berg, Joyce E. & Rietz, Thomas A., 2019. "Longshots, overconfidence and efficiency on the Iowa Electronic Market," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 35(1), pages 271-287.
    8. Reckers, Philip M.J. & Sanders, Debra L. & Roark, Stephen J., 1994. "The Influence of Ethical Attitudes on Taxpayer Compliance," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 47(4), pages 825-836, December.
    9. Bier, Vicki & Gutfraind, Alexander, 2019. "Risk analysis beyond vulnerability and resilience – characterizing the defensibility of critical systems," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 276(2), pages 626-636.
    10. Sitinjak Elizabeth Lucky Maretha & Haryanti Kristiana & Kurniasari Widuri & Sasmito Yohanes Wisnu Djati, 2019. "Investor behavior based on personality and company life cycle," HOLISTICA – Journal of Business and Public Administration, Sciendo, vol. 10(2), pages 23-38, August.
    11. Theo Arentze & Tao Feng & Harry Timmermans & Jops Robroeks, 2012. "Context-dependent influence of road attributes and pricing policies on route choice behavior of truck drivers: results of a conjoint choice experiment," Transportation, Springer, vol. 39(6), pages 1173-1188, November.
    12. van den Bergh, J.C.J.M. & Botzen, W.J.W., 2015. "Monetary valuation of the social cost of CO2 emissions: A critical survey," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 33-46.
    13. Frank D. Hodge & Roger D. Martin & Jamie H. Pratt, 2006. "Audit Qualifications of Income†Decreasing Accounting Choices," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 23(2), pages 369-394, June.
    14. Philippe Fevrier & Sebastien Gay, 2005. "Informed Consent Versus Presumed Consent The Role of the Family in Organ Donations," HEW 0509007, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Ran Sun Lyng & Jie Zhou, 2019. "Household Portfolio Choice Before and After a House Purchase," Economics Working Papers 2019-01, Department of Economics and Business Economics, Aarhus University.
    16. Homonoff, Tatiana & Spreen, Thomas Luke & St. Clair, Travis, 2020. "Balance sheet insolvency and contribution revenue in public charities," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 186(C).
    17. Shuang Yao & Donghua Yu & Yan Song & Hao Yao & Yuzhen Hu & Benhai Guo, 2018. "Dry Bulk Carrier Investment Selection through a Dual Group Decision Fusing Mechanism in the Green Supply Chain," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(12), pages 1-19, November.
    18. Senik, Claudia, 2009. "Direct evidence on income comparisons and their welfare effects," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 72(1), pages 408-424, October.
    19. Rand Kwong Yew Low, 2018. "Vine copulas: modelling systemic risk and enhancing higher‐moment portfolio optimisation," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 58(S1), pages 423-463, November.
    20. Jose Apesteguia & Miguel Ballester, 2009. "A theory of reference-dependent behavior," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 40(3), pages 427-455, September.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:medema:v:11:y:1991:i:2:p:125-130. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.