Research

My research interests are in applied microeconomics and specifically in health economics and information frictions. My work focuses on the role of information in health care in settings such as telehealth and telemedicine usage, price transparency regulation, and choice of insurance coverage.

Publications

• “Healthcare Visit Modality Among Older Adults: Telehealth and Subsequent Emergency Department Use” (2024)

  Co-authors: Kosali Simon, Emily Hayden

  Telemedicine Reports, Vol. 5, No. 1, 2024, Pages 152-157

• “A Recursive Logit Model with Choice Aversion and Its Application to Transportation Networks.” (2022)

  Co-authors: Jorge Lorca, Emerson Melo

  Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Volume 155, January 2022, Pages 47-71

  [Code]

Working Papers

• Job Market Paper: “Health Outcomes, Information Costs, and the Rise of Telehealth during the COVID-19 Pandemic” (Latest Draft: April 2024)

  Abstract: How has the increase in synchronous telemedicine services throughout the COVID-19 pandemic impacted patient health outcomes? Using 2018-2022q1 claims data from Optum’s de-identified Clinformatics®️ Data Mart Database, I examine differences in telehealth and face-to-face care for office and outpatient evaluation and management (E/M) service claims, where telehealth coding has been the most frequent. Telehealth usage is associated with higher likelihood of patient mortality and ER visit within 6 months of E/M service claim, where I find an average effect of 5 additional deaths and 13 additional ER visits per 1,000 patients in the post-March 2020 period. To explain observed differences in health outcomes across visit modalities, I model the physician-patient interaction as a costly information acquisition problem, where rationally inattentive physicians learn about the patient’s health status through costly signals. Estimated increases in information costs with telehealth usage range between 5 to 29 percent on average after March 2020. These findings quantify the consequences of using telehealth as a substitute for in-person care.

• “Refining the Analysis of Medicare Plan Choices and Utilization: A Disaggregated Approach” (Latest Draft: February 2024)

  Co-authors: Michael DeDad, Volodymyr Lugovskyy, Alexandre Skiba

  [Code]

• “Effects of Public Price Transparency Tools on Shopping for Health Care” (Latest Draft: September 2023)

Works in Progress

• “Pregnancy Identification and Radiology Scans in the Emergency Department: A Causal Analysis”

  Project: Examining racial disparities in pregnancy identification in the emergency department and studying the causal impact of pregnancy identification on radiology scans

  Co-authors: Angela Campbell, Sami Gharbi, Sarah Wiehe

• “Social and Neighborhood Determinants of Healthcare: Medical Appointments No-Show Rates in Urban and Rural Indiana”

  Project: Using patient health records and appointment scheduling information from the Indiana Health Information Exchange through Regenstrief Institute Data Core to study no-show behavior

  Co-authors: Volodymyr Lugovskyy, Patrick Shih

Additional Projects

• “Fraud Detection with Medicare Provider Data” (2022)

  Collaborators: Jonathan Leslie

  Created for Erdős Institute’s Fall 2022 Code Data Science Boot Camp

  [Code] [Slides]