Physician Quality
A longstanding challenge in healthcare markets is that provider quality is difficult for patients to observe prior to receiving care. Public reporting of physician outcomes and quality measures is intended to address this information problem by helping patients make better choices and by creating incentives for providers to improve performance. Understanding the effects of physician quality disclosure therefore requires examining both how patients respond to quality information and how providers adjust their behavior in response to increased observability.
The literature on physician quality disclosure emphasizes two key margins of adjustment. First, public reporting can shift patient demand and referral patterns toward higher-rated providers, potentially improving allocative efficiency. Second, disclosure can induce changes in provider behavior through reputational concerns, intrinsic motivation, or strategic responses such as selection and gaming. Importantly, these effects need not align, and quality disclosure may improve measured performance without improving underlying care.
We introduce this literature by focusing on empirical work that isolates the causal effects of physician quality reporting on patient choice and provider behavior. These studies highlight both the promise of disclosure as a policy tool and the challenges it poses for measurement and welfare analysis. This discussion sets up the following classes on insurance ratings and price transparency, where similar mechanisms operate in different institutional contexts.
Potential papers for presentation today include:
- Dranove et al. (2003) — a foundational study of how public report cards affect provider behavior and outcomes
- Kolstad (2013) — evidence on physician responses to quality disclosure driven by intrinsic motivation
- Epstein (2010) — analysis of how quality report cards reshape referral patterns among physicians