Analysis of the U.S. Patient Referral Network

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the US Patient Referral Network from 2009 to 2015, revealing power law distributions, small-world properties, and hub physicians, providing insights into healthcare system dynamics through network analysis.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive network analysis of the US patient referral system, uncovering structural patterns and correlations with healthcare statistics.

Findings

Power law distributions in state-level data

Presence of small-world network structure

Identification of key hub physicians

Abstract

In this paper we analyze the US Patient Referral Network (also called the Shared Patient Network) and various subnetworks for the years 2009--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 healthcare 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 healthcare system and opportunities or mechanisms for catalyzing improvements.