Taloustieteellisiä tutkimuksia terveydenhuoltomarkkinoista

2019

Information Integration, Coordination Failures, and Quality of Prescribing

2020

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 o…

Information Integration, Coordination Failures, and Quality of Prescribing

2022

Poor information flows hamper coordination, potentially leading to suboptimal decisions in health care. We examine the effects of a large-scale policy of health information integration. We use the staggered adoption of a nationwide electronic prescribing system over four years in Finland and prescription-level administrative data. Our results show no discernible effect on the probability of co-prescribing harmful drugs on average, but the heterogeneity analysis reveals that this probability reduces in rural regions, by 35 percent. This substantial reduction is driven by interacting prescriptions from different physicians and generalists. Information integration can therefore improve the coo…