TY  - JOUR
AU  - Frakes, Michael D
AU  - Gruber, Jonathan
AU  - Jena, Anupam
TI  - Is Great Information Good Enough?  Evidence from Physicians as Patients
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 26038
PY  - 2019
Y2  - July 2019
DO  - 10.3386/w26038
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w26038
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w26038.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Michael D. Frakes
Duke University
School of Law
210 Science Drive
Box 90362
Durham, NC  27708
Tel: 919-613-7185
E-Mail: Michael.frakes@law.duke.edu

Jonathan Gruber
Department of Economics, E52-434
MIT
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02139
Tel: 617/253-8892
Fax: 617/253-1330
E-Mail: gruberj@mit.edu

Anupam Jena
Department of Health Care Policy
Harvard Medical School
180 Longwood Avenue, Door A
Boston, MA 02115
E-Mail: jena@hcp.med.harvard.edu
AB  - 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.
ER  -