Is More Information Better? The Effects of 'Report Cards' on Health Care Providers / David Dranove, Daniel Kessler, Mark McClellan, Mark Satterthwaite.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Dranove, David.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Kessler, Daniel.

McClellan, Mark.

Satterthwaite, Mark.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w8697.

NBER working paper series no. w8697

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2002.

Summary:

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.

Notes:

Print version record

January 2002.