Do Surgeons Strategically Select Patients to Improve Scores on Health Care Quality Report Cards?

Do report cards improve quality or simply incentivize hospitals and physicians to stratetically choose which patients to treat? To answer this question, a paper by Chen and Meinecke (2012) examine coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) report cards introduced in Pennsylvania.  Report cards can improve quality but they can also induce selection behavior not only by…

Why don’t patients care about quality?

For nursing homes at least, patients do not seem to have much choice.  According to an article by Grabowski and Town: The introduction of the NHQI was generally unrelated to facility quality and consumer demand. However, nursing homes facing greater competition improved their quality more than facilities in less competitive markets…The lack of competition in…