Information and Disparities in Health Care Quality: Evidence from GP Choice in England
6 Nov 2024
17:00 -18:00
Times are shown in local time.
Open to: All
Lecture Theatre 2 (Cambridge Judge Business School)
Trumpington St
Cambridge
CB2 1AG
United Kingdom
Join our Economics and Policy seminar
Speaker: Dr Andre Veiga, Imperial College Business School
About the seminar topic
Low-income patients tend to receive lower quality health care. They have limited access to high quality options and – even conditional on access – are less likely to choose high performing providers.
We show that differential information about quality is an important determinant of this disparity. Our empirical strategy exploits the temporary presence of a website that publicly displayed summary star ratings of general practitioner (GP) offices in England. Regression discontinuity (RD) estimates show that, on average, patients respond sharply to the information on the website, and that this response is almost entirely driven by residents of low-income neighbourhoods.
We incorporate these RD moments in a structural demand model that allows for consumer inertia as well as heterogeneity by income in baseline information and preferences. Our results indicate that a meaningful fraction of the income-quality gradient could be eliminated by removing informational differences. This suggests that relatively low-cost information interventions have the potential to reduce health care inequalities.
Speaker bio
Andre Veiga is Assistant Professor of Economics at Imperial College London. His research focuses on the industrial organisation of healthcare, insurance and digital markets.
He uses theory and data to understand how individuals and firms operate in these markets, and how best to regulate them.
Register
No registration required. If you have any questions about this seminar, please email Emily Brown.