The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery (American) 82:595 (2000)
© 2000 The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, Inc.
The Orthopaedic Forum. Topics in Medical Economics: Lessons of the Prisoner's Dilemma*
Joseph Bernstein, M.D., M.S.
*No benefits in any form have been received or will be received
from a commercial party related directly or indirectly to the subject
of this article.
Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Leonard Davis Institute of
Health Economics, 424 Stemmler Hall, University of Pennsylvania
School of Medicine, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-6081. E-mail
address: orthodoc@mail.med.upenn.edu
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
The jousting between surgeons and insurance
companies over fees can be fierce, and to the outside observer it
seems anything but playful. Nevertheless, the insights that surgeons need
to prevail in this battle may lie in a branch of theoretical economics
called game theory.
The word game typically refers to a sport or
contest, with the implicit connotation of recreation. The technical definition
of a game, however, omits any notion of amusement. A game is defined
as an encounter in which players execute plans of action under a
set of rules to maximize their score - points, money, territory,
whatever is at stake. Game theory, then, is the study of strategy
and tactics. Game theory can be used to plan the moves of a chess
game but can also be applied to any real-world situation in which
the interaction between "players" satisfies the definition of a game.
In fact, . . . [Full Text of this Article]
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