Room LG 0.423

Information shocks and provider adaptation: Evidence from interventional cardiology

Abstract:We study diffusion of innovation in medical care and its effects on quality of care by exploiting how physicians reacted and adapted to a worldwide information shock on the potentially adverse effects of drug-eluting stents. Applying rich micro-data on all percutaneous coronary interventions performed in Swedish hospitals, we measure physicians’ adaptability as the rate with which individual cardiologists responded to the new stent safety information. We find large variation in response across physicians, that more conservative adapters perform better over a range of patient outcomes, and that clearer guidelines reduce both variation in response and in clinical outcomes. We argue that our findings reflect physician preferences and cannot be attributed to patient selection across cardiologist types, nor to heterogeneity in cardiologist skill or treatment method.