ArticleStatistics in medicine2018
Analysis of the U.S. patient referral network.
Article in Statistics in medicine, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 34 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
34 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- A Bibliometric Analysis and Visualization of Decision Support Systems for Healthcare Referral Strategies.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Pooled it
- A Systematic Review of Network Studies Based on Administrative Health Data.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2020Pooled it
- Primary care workforce structural inertia and Medicaid participation during the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020-2021.Health affairs scholar · 2026Article
- Dissecting medical referrals in health services: role of physician professional networks.BMC health services research · 2026Article
- Supply-demand governance of hierarchical healthcare systems: mobile big data unveils non-random patient flow patterns and the bypass premium in cities.Frontiers in public health · 2026Article
- A Scoping Review of Multilevel Patient-Sharing Network Measures in Health Services Research.Medical care research and review : MCRR · 2025Article
- Methodology for supervised optimization of the construction of physician shared-patient networks.Statistical methods in medical research · 2025Article
- Combining multiple sources of relationships in a network to advance understanding of physicians' beliefs regarding peer-effects.Health services & outcomes research methodology · 2025Article
- Characterizing Physician Referral Networks with Ricci Curvature.Pediatric and lifespan data science : First International Conference, IPLDSC 2024, Anaheim, CA, USA, May 23-24, 2024, Revised Selected Papers. International Pediatric and Lifespan Data Science Conference (1st : 2024 : Anaheim, Calif.) · 2025Article
- Exploiting relationship directionality to enhance statistical modeling of peer-influence across social networks.Statistics in medicine · 2024Article
- Article
- Estimating the impact of physician risky-prescribing on the network structure underlying physician shared-patient relationships.Research square · 2024Article
- Estimating the impact of physician risky-prescribing on the network structure underlying physician shared-patient relationships.Applied network science · 2024Article
- Optimal Physician Shared-Patient Networks and the Diffusion of Medical Technologies.Journal of data science : JDS · 2023Article
- Analyzing annual changes in network structures of a social media application-based information-sharing system in a Japanese community.BMC health services research · 2022Article
- Using network analysis to model the effects of the SARS Cov2 pandemic on acute patient care within a healthcare system.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Observational
- Regional medical inter-institutional cooperation in medical provider network constructed using patient claims data from Japan.PloS one · 2022Article
- Investigation of patient-sharing networks using a Bayesian network model selection approach for congruence class models.Statistics in medicine · 2021Article
- The association of insurance plan characteristics with physician patient-sharing network structure.International journal of health economics and management · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
In this paper, we analyze the US Patient Referral Network (also called the Shared Patient Network) and various subnetworks for the years 2009 to 2015. In these networks, two physicians are linked if a patient encounters both of them within a specified time interval, according to the data made available by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. We find power law distributions on most state-level data as well as a core-periphery structure. On a national and state level, we discover a so-called small-world structure as well as a "gravity law" of the type found in some large-scale economic networks. Some physicians play the role of hubs for interstate referral. Strong correlations between certain network statistics with health care system statistics at both the state and national levels are discovered. The patterns in the referral network evinced using several statistical analyses involving key metrics derived from the network illustrate the potential for using network analysis to provide new insights into the health care system and opportunities or mechanisms for catalyzing improvements.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.