A Taste of Their Own Medicine: Guideline Adherence and Access to Expertise

Amy Finkelstein, Petra Persson (), Maria Polyakova and Jesse Shapiro
Additional contact information
Amy Finkelstein: MIT, Postal: and NBER
Petra Persson: Stanford University, Postal: and Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN), Stockholm, Sweden,, https://www.ifn.se/en/researchers/affiliated-researchers/petra-persson/
Maria Polyakova: Stanford University, Postal: and NBER

No 1421, Working Paper Series from Research Institute of Industrial Economics

Abstract: We use population administrative data from Sweden to study adherence to 63 medication-related guidelines. We compare the adherence of patients without personal access to medical expertise to the adherence of those with access, namely doctors and their close relatives. We estimate that, among observably similar patients, access to expertise is associated with 3.8 percentage points lower adherence, relative to a baseline adherence rate of 54.4 percent among those without access. This association is larger for recommendations with a weaker clinical motivation. Our findings suggest an important role in non-adherence for factors other than those, such as ignorance, complexity, or failures of patient-provider communication, that would be expected to diminish with access to expertise.

Keywords: Information; Medical decision-making; Experts (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D83 I12 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 39 pages
Date: 2021-12-13
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Related works:
Journal Article: A Taste of Their Own Medicine: Guideline Adherence and Access to Expertise (2022)
Working Paper: A Taste of Their Own Medicine: Guideline Adherence and Access to Expertise (2021)
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