Is Great Information Good Enough? Evidence from Physicians as Patients / Michael D. Frakes, Jonathan Gruber, Anupam Jena.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Frakes, Michael D.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Gruber, Jonathan.

Jena, Anupam.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w26038.

NBER working paper series no. w26038

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2019.

Summary:

Stemming from the belief that the key barrier to achieving high-quality and low-cost health care is the deficiency of information and medical knowledge among patients, an enormous number of health policies are focused on patient education. In this paper, we attempt to place an upper bound on the improvements to health care quality that may emanate from such information campaigns. To do so, we compare the care received by a group of patients that should have the best possible information on health care service efficacy--i.e., physicians as patients--with a comparable group of non-physician patients, taking various steps to account for unobservable differences between the two groups. Our results suggest that physicians do only slightly better in adhering to both low- and high-value care guidelines than non-physicians - but not by much and not always.

Notes:

Print version record

July 2019.