Date and Time
October 31, 2007
1:30 PM - 3:00 PM

Availability
Open to the public
No RSVP required

Although policy makers have increasingly turned to provider report cards as a tool to improve health care quality, existing studies of their effects provide little evidence that they influence consumer choices. We examine the effects of providing consumers with quality information in the context of fertility clinics providing Assisted Reproductive Therapies (ART). The implementation of report cards in this setting was characterized by two important features: participation by clinics in report cards was mandatory and nearly all clinics participated in a reporting system that was not widely disseminated publicly prior to the mandate.

We find that consumers responded to the information in the report card by rewarding clinics reporting good performance with higher market share. We also find evidence that consumers made use of simple measures of risk adjustment when evaluating the information and that the benefits of public reporting were greatest for the least informed consumers. We conclude that health care provider quality reporting initiatives can influence consumer decision-making.