TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Böckerman, Petri
AU  - Laine, Liisa
AU  - Nurminen, Mikko
AU  - Saxell, Tanja
        TI  - Information Integration, Coordination Failures, and Quality of Prescribing
        PY  - 2020/Dec/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 13926
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp13926
        AB  - 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 of prescribing.
        KW  - health information technology
KW  - digitalization
KW  - e-prescribing
KW  - integration
KW  - quality of prescribing
KW  - public policy
        ER  -