Information Integration, Coordination Failures, and Quality of Prescribing

Petri Böckerman (), Liisa Laine, Mikko Nurminen and Tanja Saxell

No 135, Working Papers from VATT Institute for Economic Research

Abstract: Poor information flows hamper coordination, potentially leading to suboptimal decisions in health care. We examine the effects of a nationwide policy of information integration on the quality of prescribing. We use the rollout of an electronic prescribing system in Finland and prescription-level administrative data. We find no effect on the probability of co-prescribing harmful drug combinations in urban regions. In rural regions, this probability reduces substantially, by 35 percent. The effect is driven by prescriptions from unspecialized physicians and from multiple physicians. Improving the local information environment thus enhances coordination and narrows differences in the quality of prescribing.

Keywords: health information technology; digitalization; e-prescribing; integration; quality of prescribing; public policy; Local public finance and provision of public services; H51; H75; Terveyspalvelut (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-hea and nep-ict
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https://www.doria.fi/handle/10024/178284

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Working Paper: Information Integration, Coordination Failures, and Quality of Prescribing (2020)
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