Expertise: is it a gift or a curse? Evidence from the New Zealand health care sector

This study investigates whether highly skilled health care providers are at a disadvantage because they attract difficult cases, by examining all publicly funded patient discharges in New Zealand over 1999–2011. Using a patient's transfer status and the complication and co-morbidity level as the measures of task difficulty, the effects of task difficulty on three performance indicators commonly used in practice, the length of hospital stay and...