Health security

When Medical Doctors Are Entrepreneurs

Like the economic entrepreneur, doctors take into account not only quantifiable knowledge, but also locally obtained, tacit knowledge. This is a concept that we associate with F.A. Hayek, but a similar idea has been validated recently by psychologist Gary Klein in his studies on how experts — including doctors — make decisions. The totality of available knowledge is used, explicit and implicit. And we could push the analogy of the physician as health entrepreneur further if we recognize that, in a praxeological sense, the patient gives up ownership, or cedes control, of his or her body to the doctor.