Working Paper: NBER ID: w26038
Authors: Michael D. Frakes; Jonathan Gruber; Anupam Jena
Abstract: 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.
Keywords: health care quality; patient education; information disclosure
JEL Codes: H51; I11
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Physicians (I11) | higher-value medical services (I11) |
| Physicians (I11) | lower use of low-value care (I11) |
| Information scarcity (D89) | care quality (L15) |
| Physicians (I11) | adherence to care guidelines (I10) |
| Physicians (I11) | care decisions based on information (D87) |