Diffusion of New Medical Technology: The Case of TAVR

This paper studies the effect of medical training during clinical trials on physicians’ adoption of new medical procedures in the case of Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement (TAVR). Exploring the discontinuity of the timing of the clinical trial, we compare diffusion patterns of TAVR among physicians who were medical fellows at the clinical trial hospitals during the time of the trial versus those who were trained at the same program but completed training just before the clinical trial started. To control for trends, we difference out the same comparison for physicians who were trained over the same period of time at non-trial hospitals. We find that training during clinical trials significantly increased the likelihood of adoption and the utilization of the new procedure. Our finding implies that exposure to clinical trials during medical training contributes to the formation and evolution of practice variation.