Dranove D, Kessler D, McClellan M & Satterthwaite M, (2003)

‘Is more information better? The effects of report cards on health care providers’

Journal of Political Economy 111(3): 555-588

• Examines the impact of a patient information reform (producing ‘report cards’ on hospital’s Coronary Artery Bypass Graft [CABG] surgery statistics) on patient outcomes and hospital behaviour in New York and Pennsylvania.
• Uses panel data from Medicare to assess how CABG report cards affected the selection of patients receiving CABG surgery, and their subsequent health outcomes.

Key results:

The New York & Pennsylvania CABG report cards appear to have led to –

• Hospitals offering fewer CABG procedures to severely ill patients, instead using less effective therapies not included on ‘report cards’. This led to higher rates of mortality and recurrent heart attacks among severely ill patients.
• Significant declines in other intensive cardiac procedures for relatively sick AMI patients.
• A decline in the illness severity of patients receiving CABG in New York & Pennsylvania relative to patients in states without report cards.
  

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