The Distribution of Doctor Quality: Evidence from Cardiologists in England

I provide new evidence on the role doctors play in determining patient outcomes.I exploit within-hospital quasi-random assignment of heart attack patients to doctors to estimate the effectiveness of individual doctors.I estimate a standard deviation increase in doctor quality reduces one-year mortality by 1.0 percentage points (7% of mean mortality).I show mortality could be reduced by 4% by reassigning doctors within hospitals to patients on the basis of their comparative advantage in treating specific patient types.This suggests reallocating existing staff could substantially improve patient outcomes.