More Hospital Workers Turn to Prediction Markets for Extra Income

Jackson, MS - Prediction market mania is sweeping the nation, and an increasing number of medical professionals are turning to apps like Kalshi and Polymarket to supplement incomes or to just have a little fun on the job.

A nurse, shown here explaining to a patient that she won $50 on Kalshi after correctly predicting that he would pass his kidney stone before shift change

"The great thing about these apps is that they don't involve any gambling," Gabe Throcken, a critical care nurse at University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC), explained. "Gambling on patient outcomes would be wrong. This isn't gambling, it's prediction. And I can quit anytime I want."

Increasingly popular in recent years, prediction market participants trade event-based contracts whose prices reflect collective forecasts of future outcomes. You can essentially put your money where your mouth is on pretty much anything, from which team will win an NBA game to which country the United States is going to invade next. I put my money on Seychelles, a small African country made up of over 100 islands known for tourism and slowly sinking due to rising sea levels. 

Doctors, nurses, and a variety of other hospital workers across the country are now paying even closer attention to vital signs, blood culture results, and many other objective patient outcomes. According to Dr. LouAnn Woodward, the Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs at UMMC, she has seen a sharper focus on providing quality patient care. "It has been amazing. I've never seen so much attention being paid to the little things, like what a newborn's bilirubin level is or how long it took the intern to get a family to agree to organ donation."

There are some potential downsides, however. Dr. Woodward did raise the concern of insider trading. "People providing direct patient care have a lot of potential influence, and someone might take advantage. In fact, I just bought five hundred shares of the yes side on that one. This is fun!"