Characterizing Physician Referral Networks with Ricci Curvature

TL;DR

This paper introduces Ricci curvature measures as innovative tools for analyzing physician referral networks to identify regional disparities and healthcare efficacy indicators, supported by an open-source analysis tool.

Contribution

It applies geometrical-topological Ricci curvature measures to healthcare networks, providing new insights into regional disparities and developing the APPARENT tool for analysis.

Findings

Ricci curvature measures correlate with healthcare efficacy.

Curvature captures regional demographic and healthcare variation.

The APPARENT tool enables comprehensive network analysis.

Abstract

Identifying (a) systemic barriers to quality healthcare access and (b) key indicators of care efficacy in the United States remains a significant challenge. To improve our understanding of regional disparities in care delivery, we introduce a novel application of curvature, a geometrical-topological property of networks, to Physician Referral Networks. Our initial findings reveal that Forman-Ricci and Ollivier-Ricci curvature measures, which are known for their expressive power in characterizing network structure, offer promising indicators for detecting variations in healthcare efficacy while capturing a range of significant regional demographic features. We also present APPARENT, an open-source tool that leverages Ricci curvature and other network features to examine correlations between regional Physician Referral Networks structure, local census data, healthcare effectiveness, and patient outcomes.