Speaker: Research Fellow Fu Mingwei

Time: 2:30 p.m., December 4th, 2025 (Thursday)

Place: Conference Room on the 8th Floor, Office Building, School of Economics

Speaker Information:

Fu Mingwei is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Economics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS). He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Peking University and has served as a Visiting Scholar at Pennsylvania State University in the United States. He is also a member of the “Population, Labor, and Health Economics Committee” of the China Economic Annual Conference and a council member of the Aging Economics Branch of the China Association of Gerontology and Geriatrics. In addition, he serves as an anonymous referee for several leading journals, including Economic Research Journal, Management World, and China Economic Quarterly.

More Information:

This study utilizes administrative data from outpatient visits of chronic disease patients at a large, prestigious hospital to estimate the impact of continuity of care (COC) on physician decision-making, patient medical expenses and health outcome. Our findings indicate that COC significantly reduces medical expense by 5.3%. We attribute this reduction to physicians leveraging tacit knowledge gained from continuous patient care, which aids diagnosis and consequently reduces reliance on standard imaging and laboratory tests, thereby lowering costs. Importantly, this decrease in medical testing does not compromise diagnostic quality or negatively affect patient health outcomes. These results are substantiated by a series of robustness tests. This paper suggests that policies designed to control medical expenditures should prioritize enhancing continuity of care.