Hannah Trachtman, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

"Treating Doctors: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Surgery"

Abstract

Managing experts is a common challenge. We implement a field experiment in a large public hospital to investigate whether a cheap, scalable, non-financial intervention can promote cost-effective health care among medical professionals. Our intervention, designed to motivate surgical teams to reduce excessive use of disposable items, includes customized informational messages targeting many types of surgeries and items. We randomly vary whether the surgeon, the circulating nurse (who physically opens disposable items), or both receive the intervention. We find that treating the surgeon, with or without treating the nurse, reduces the costs of targeted disposable equipment by 9-11%. We exploit administrative and survey data to examine factors that mediate the effectiveness of the intervention, and to explore broader implications for shifting expert behavior.

Hannah Trachtman is a Lecturer (tenure track) in the Economics Department at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her research focuses on topics in behavioral economics, economic development, and health. She received her Ph.D in Economics at Yale University in the spring of 2020.

You can read more about Hannah Trachtman here

CEBI contact: Christina Gravert