Physician induced demand for knee replacement surgery in Iran.

Background: The structure of the Iranian health system has raised this hypothesis that a part of the Knee Replacement Surgery (KRS) services are provided due to Physician-Induced Demand (PID).

Methods: This paper used an unbalanced individual panel data covering the steady-state 15,729 KRSs performed by 995 surgeons provided by the Armed Forces Insurance Organization at the provincial level over the 60 months (2014-2018). We use a generalized method of moment's system (GMM-SYS) to obtain consistent and asymptotically efficient estimates, which provide a vital instrument for our dynamic panel data.