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Overcoming Medical Overuse with AI Assistance: An Experimental Investigation

Ziyi Wang, Lijia Wei, Lian Xue

arXiv 17 May 2024 · General Economics · 1 citations (OpenAlex)

arXiv:2405.10539 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

This study evaluates the effectiveness of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in mitigating medical overtreatment, a significant issue characterized by unnecessary interventions that inflate healthcare costs and pose risks to patients. We conducted a lab-in-the-field experiment at a medical school, utilizing a novel medical prescription task, manipulating monetary incentives and the availability of AI assistance among medical students using a three-by-two factorial design. We tested three incentive schemes: Flat (constant pay regardless of treatment quantity), Progressive (pay increases with the number of treatments), and Regressive (penalties for overtreatment) to assess their influence on the adoption and effectiveness of AI assistance. Our findings demonstrate that AI significantly reduced overtreatment rates by up to 62% in the Regressive incentive conditions where (prospective) physician and patient interests were most aligned. Diagnostic accuracy improved by 17% to 37%, depending on the incentive scheme. Adoption of AI advice was high, with approximately half of the participants modifying their decisions based on AI input across all settings. For policy implications, we quantified the monetary (57%) and non-monetary (43%) incentives of overtreatment and highlighted AI's potential to mitigate non-monetary incentives and enhance social welfare. Our results provide valuable insights for healthcare administrators considering AI integration into healthcare systems.

Citation extraction

64
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70
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appendix boundary found by appendix_command · 68% of the source is main text. Read the extracted text to check this.

Most heavily cited references

The works this paper leans on most, across its whole bibliography — not restricted to papers in our corpus. Ranked by composite intensity, which combines how often a work is mentioned, how many sections mention it, and how much of that falls in the main text rather than the appendix.

ReferenceIntensityMentionsSectionsMain text
1agrawal2022power APACrefauthors Agrawal, A. , Gans, J. \ Goldfarb, A… (2022) 20220.84333100%
2brownlee2017evidence APACrefauthors Brownlee, S. , Chalkidou, K. , D… (2017) 20170.58531100%
3korenstein2012overuse APACrefauthors Korenstein, D. , Falk, R. , How… (2012) 20120.58531100%
4al2023review APACrefauthors Al Kuwaiti, A. , Nazer, K. , Al-Reedy, A… (2023) 20230.40511100%
5albarqouni2023overuse APACrefauthors Albarqouni, L. , Palagama, S. ,… (2023) 20230.40511100%
6almog2024ai APACrefauthors Almog, D. , Gauriot, R. , Page, L. \ Mart… (2024) 20240.40511100%
7bishop2010physicians APACrefauthors Bishop, T F. , Federman, A D. \… (2010) 20100.40511100%
8blais2006domain APACrefauthors Blais, A R. \ Weber, E U. APACrefauth… (2006) 20060.40511100%
9burton2020systematic APACrefauthors Burton, J W. , Stein, M K. \ Jen… (2020) 20200.40511100%
10carpenter1990one APACrefauthors Carpenter, P A. , Just, M A. \ Shell… (1990) 19900.40511100%

Showing the top 10 of 64 scored citations.

Cited by, within the corpus

arXiv econ.EM papers that cite this one, ranked by how heavily they lean on it.

Citing paperIntensityMentionsSections
1Statistical tests for replacing human decision makers with algorithms0.40511