Title: Coordination, switching costs and the division of labor in general medicine
Description: "The NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health provides summaries of publications like this.  You can sign up to receive the NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health by email.  General medical care in the United States has historically been provided by physicians who care for their patients in both ambulatory and hospital settings.  Care is now increasingly divided between physicians specializing in hospital care (hospitalists) and ambulatory-based care primary care physicians.  We develop and find strong empirical support for a theoretical model of the division of labor in general medicine that views the use of hospitalists as balancing the costs of coordinating care across physicians in the hospitalist model against physicians' costs switching between ambulatory and hospital settings in the traditional model.  Our findings suggest opportunities to improve care"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site.