ArticleMedical care research and review : MCRR2014
Complexity, public reporting, and choice of doctors: a look inside the blackest box of consumer behavior.
Article in Medical care research and review : MCRR, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 42 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
42 citing papers in PubMed.
- Presenting Cost and Efficiency Measures That Support Consumers to Make High-Value Health Care Choices.Health services research · 2018Trial
- Factors That Matter to Low-Income and Racial/Ethnic Minority Mothers When Choosing a Pediatric Practice: a Mixed Methods Analysis.Journal of racial and ethnic health disparities · 2017Trial
- The effect of public reporting presentation on patients' decision making: An experimental survey in Yunan Province, China.Medicine · 2017Trial
- Trial
- Understanding Consumer Perceptions and Awareness of Hospital-Based Maternity Care Quality Measures.Health services research · 2016Trial
- Trial
- Insights into the impact of online physician reviews on patients' decision making: randomized experiment.Journal of medical Internet research · 2015Trial
- Urban residents' choice preferences for hospitals at different tiers and influencing factors: a study based on latent class analysis and Andersen's model of health service utilization.BMC primary care · 2026Article
- Consumer personas for CPAP purchasing in older adults with obstructive sleep apnea: a hospital database study.Future science OA · 2025Article
- The elicitation of patient preferences for hip replacement surgery: a discrete choice experiment.BMC health services research · 2025Article
- Transition from hospital to nursing home: Discharge planners as a potential lever for quality improvements?Zeitschrift fur Gerontologie und Geriatrie · 2024Article
- The elicitation of patient and physician preferences for calculating consumer-based composite measures on hospital report cards: results of two discrete choice experiments.The European journal of health economics : HEPAC : health economics in prevention and care · 2024Article
- Web-Based Public Reporting as a Decision-Making Tool for Consumers of Long-Term Care in the United States and the United Kingdom: Systematic Analysis of Report Cards.JMIR formative research · 2023Article
- Marketing factors associated with a continuous positive airway pressure machine purchasing in patients with obstructive sleep apnea.Future science OA · 2023Article
- How exposure to patient narratives affects stereotyped choices of primary care clinicians.PloS one · 2023Article
- 2022 Reinhardt lecture: The patient's voice as signal.Health services research · 2022Article
- Accounting for past patient composition in evaluations of quality reporting.Health services research · 2022Article
- A meta-analysis to identify factors associated with CPAP machine purchasing in patients with obstructive sleep apnea.Biomedical reports · 2022Article
- Testing the effects on information use by older versus younger women of modality and narration style in a hospital report card.Health expectations : an international journal of public participation in health care and health policy · 2022Article
- How do consumers respond when presented with novel doctor performance information? A multivariate regression analysis.Health expectations : an international journal of public participation in health care and health policy · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Health care consumers often make choices that are imperfectly informed and inconsistent with their expressed preferences. Past research suggests that these shortcomings become more pronounced as choices become more complex, through either additional options or more performance metrics. But it is unclear why this is true: Consumer choice remains a "black box" that research has scarcely illuminated. In this article, we identify four pathways through which complexity may impair consumer choice. We examine these pathways using data from an experiment in which consumers (hypothetically) selected a primary care physician. Some of the loss of decision quality accompanying more complex choice sets can be explained by consumers' skills and decision-making style, but even after accounting for these factors, complexity undermines the quality of decision making in ways that cannot be fully explained. We conclude by discussing implications for report designers, sponsors, and policy makers aspiring to promote consumer empowerment and health care quality.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.