Variations in Network Configurations Based on the Number of Patient-Sharing Connections Between Physicians at Different Hospitals

Patient-sharing networks of physicians practicing in 51 hospital referral regions were constructed based on Medicare administrative data from 2006 using methods adopted from social network analysis.

This interactive demonstrates differences in the configuration of patient-sharing networks as the number of shared patients (connections) between physicians (nodes) affiliated with different hospitals varies. The networks are pictorially represented using spring embedder methods, which position objects with stronger connections in closer physical proximity within a network.