Is More Information Better? The Effects of 'Report Cards' on Health Care Providers
33 Pages Posted: 10 Jan 2002 Last revised: 8 Oct 2022
There are 2 versions of this paper
Is More Information Better? The Effects of 'Report Cards' on Health Care Providers
Date Written: January 2002
Abstract
Health care report cards - public disclosure of patient health outcomes at the level of the individual physician and/or hospital - may address important informational asymmetries in markets for health care, but they may also give doctors and hospitals incentives to decline to treat more difficult, severely ill patients. Whether report cards are good for patients and for society depends on whether their financial and health benefits outweigh their costs in terms of the quantity, quality, and appropriateness of medical treatment that they induce. Using national data on Medicare patients at risk for cardiac surgery, we find that cardiac surgery report cards in New York and Pennsylvania led both to selection behavior by providers and to improved matching of patients with hospitals. On net, this led to higher levels of resource use and to worse health outcomes, particularly for sicker patients. We conclude that, at least in the short run, these report cards decreased patient and social welfare.
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?
Recommended Papers
-
The Effect of Information on Product Quality: Evidence from Restaurant Hygiene Grade Cards
By Ginger Zhe Jin and Phillip Leslie
-
Mandatory vs. Voluntary Disclosure in Markets with Informed and Uninformed Customers
-
By Cory S. Capps, David Dranove, ...
-
Effects of Information Provision in an Vertically Differentiated Market
By Tasneem Chipty and Ann Dryden Witte
-
By David M. Cutler, Robert S. Huckman, ...
-
Do Report Cards Tell Consumers Anything They Don't Already Know? the Case of Medicare Hmos
By Leemore S. Dafny and David Dranove
-
By Avi Dor, Michael Grossman, ...
-
Can Ranking Hospitals on the Basis of Patients' Travel Distances Improve Quality of Care?
-
Intermediaries as Quality Assessors: Tour Operators in the Travel Industry
By Sofronis Clerides, Paris Nearchou, ...
-
Diversity and Demand Externalities: How Cheap Information Can Reduce Welfare
By Heski Bar-isaac, Guillermo Caruana, ...