Defying distance? The provision of medical services in the digital age
Digital platforms reduce geographic frictions, enabling better matching between service providers and users. I quantify reallocation gains in Swedish online health care, using nationwide time-conditional random assignment between patients and physicians. Matching high-risk patients with doctors effective at reducing Emergency Room visits lowers such visits by 4.4 percent (SE 1.3); reallocations also reduce Counter-Guideline antibiotics by 3.1 percent (1.4 ). I find limited trade-offs in matching; horizontal differentiation among doctors and varied patient needs allow improvement in multiple outcomes simultaneously. Efficiency-enhancing reallocations also affect equity. The findings highlight the potential for care reorganization aligning provider heterogeneity with patient needs when geographic constraints are lifted.
9 September 2026
American Economic Review 116(9) , pp.3464-3509, 2026
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20240756
This Journal article is published under the centre's Labour programme.