Matching Doctors with Hospitals: Matching Markets
Article: https://www.nrmp.org/
The doctor’s process of applying to various programs once out of medical school is a hard one. They must compete with countless other graduates applying to the same places, many with equitable or greater skill. The decision is equally hard for the hospitals and training programs accepting potential applications: while the doctor wants to receive the highest reward for their work, the hospital wants to maximize the potential of any new employee, hiring the best that they can. How is it possible to make as many parties involved as happy as possible?
The concept of Matching Markets offers a way to facilitate this. The National Residency Matching Program, or NRMP, allows both doctors and hospitals to list their preferences of the other group, which is used as input in an algorithm which won the 2012 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. This algorithm, known as The Match, matches the applicant to the hospital according to both the applicant’s and hospital’s ranking of each other as best as possible. The algorithm has been used since 1997 and has been widely successful since then.
One of the more interesting aspects of The Match is the concept of “couple’s matching” — that 2 people who are a couple while in med school can combinationally rank their matches of hospitals together — which leads to a much more nuanced interpretation of The Match, and allows couples to use The Match to their advantage by giving them a way to stay together throughout their residency training program.