Comment by jacobrobbins

re-reading your comment "This is talking about the cost-benefit from a societal perspective, not from the accounting perspective of the hospital." I think perhaps you do not understand what residents do. Residents handle a portion of the patient workload. They provide direct economic benefit to the hospital by handling patient workload at a lower salary than more senior doctors. There is a hierarchical system by which work is reviewed by more senior doctors but this is used in all hospitals regardless of whether there are residents. The economic benefit to the hospital is that residents do the work for lower salary than doctors. Putting that into dollar terms is what this article has failed to do, likely because the data to do so is not there.