Matching MIR Students with Hospitals in Spain
Matching-mir-students-with-hospitals-in-spain
The article, written by Jose Luis Ferreira, discusses the problem with the current method of assigning medical graduates who passed the MIR exam to residency positions in Spain (MIRC). Currently, the graduate students who ranked the highest on the MIR exam gets to choose their preferred position, and the next highest student chooses the next, etc. Once there are no more available positions in public hospitals, private hospitals will open up positions. However, private hospitals are given the ability to veto certain students. This causes the matching system of assigning students to be unstable, as students can be assigned to hospitals, where neither of them prefer to be with each other (see the article for in depth example). This happens when the hospitals first veto the students, and the students pick from the available hospitals. Thus, a new solution of matching (DMIRC) has been proposed, where students first declare their preferred hospitals, and the hospitals selects from the students that have approved the hospitals.
The problem discussed in this article connects to the topic of matching markets and valuations. The goal of matching medical graduates with the hospitals in Spain is to maximize the preferences of both the students (based on their performance) as well as the preferences of the hospital (vetos), similar to maximizing the sum of valuations we discussed in class. Unlike the matching markets we discussed in class, there are two “valuations” that need to be taken into account for this situation; we need to maximize the social welfare of both the hospitals (private veto) and the students (preference for which hospital). I found this scenario quite interesting, since the solution (DMIRC) proposed only works if the hospitals choose and the students veto, not the other way around. This is because there are less hospitals than there are students, thus if hospitals were allowed to veto, then the availability of hospitals for all the graduate students would be reduced significantly. Thus, this situation emphasized the importance of creating stable matches in matching-markets.