The Quality of Medical Advice in Low-Income Countries

This paper documents the quality of medical advice in low-income countries. Our evidence on health care quality in low-income countries is drawn primarily from studies in four countries: Tanzania, India, Indonesia, and Paraguay. We provide an overview of recent work that uses two broad approaches: m...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors:	Das, Jishnu, Hammer, Jeffrey, Leonard, Kenneth
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	EN
Published:	2012
Subjects:	Analysis of Health Care Markets I110 Health: Government Policy Regulation Public Health I180 Economic Development: Human Resources Human Development Income Distribution Migration O150
Online Access:	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/5573

id	okr-10986-5573
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	okr-10986-55732021-04-23T14:02:22Z The Quality of Medical Advice in Low-Income Countries Das, Jishnu Hammer, Jeffrey Leonard, Kenneth Analysis of Health Care Markets I110 Health: Government Policy Regulation Public Health I180 Economic Development: Human Resources Human Development Income Distribution Migration O150 This paper documents the quality of medical advice in low-income countries. Our evidence on health care quality in low-income countries is drawn primarily from studies in four countries: Tanzania, India, Indonesia, and Paraguay. We provide an overview of recent work that uses two broad approaches: medical vignettes (in which medical providers are presented with hypothetical cases and their responses are compared to a checklist of essential procedures) and direct observation of the doctor--patient interaction These two approaches have proved quite informative. For example, doctors in Tanzania complete less than a quarter of the essential checklist for patients with classic symptoms of malaria, a disease that kills 63,000-96,000 Tanzanians each year. A public-sector doctor in India asks one (and only one) question in the average interaction: "What's wrong with you?" We present systematic evidence in this paper to show that these isolated facts represent common patterns. We find that the quality of care in low-income countries as measured by what doctors know is very low, and that the problem of low competence is compounded due to low effort--doctors provide lower standards of care for their patients than they know how to provide. We discuss how the properties and correlates of measures based on vignettes and observation may be used to evaluate policy changes. Finally, we outline the agenda in terms of further research and measurement. 2012-03-30T07:33:29Z 2012-03-30T07:33:29Z 2008 Journal Article Journal of Economic Perspectives 08953309 http://hdl.handle.net/10986/5573 EN http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo World Bank Journal Article Tanzania
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	Digital Repositories
building	World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection	World Bank
language	EN
topic	Analysis of Health Care Markets I110 Health: Government Policy Regulation Public Health I180 Economic Development: Human Resources Human Development Income Distribution Migration O150
spellingShingle	Analysis of Health Care Markets I110 Health: Government Policy Regulation Public Health I180 Economic Development: Human Resources Human Development Income Distribution Migration O150 Das, Jishnu Hammer, Jeffrey Leonard, Kenneth The Quality of Medical Advice in Low-Income Countries
geographic_facet	Tanzania
relation	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo
description	This paper documents the quality of medical advice in low-income countries. Our evidence on health care quality in low-income countries is drawn primarily from studies in four countries: Tanzania, India, Indonesia, and Paraguay. We provide an overview of recent work that uses two broad approaches: medical vignettes (in which medical providers are presented with hypothetical cases and their responses are compared to a checklist of essential procedures) and direct observation of the doctor--patient interaction These two approaches have proved quite informative. For example, doctors in Tanzania complete less than a quarter of the essential checklist for patients with classic symptoms of malaria, a disease that kills 63,000-96,000 Tanzanians each year. A public-sector doctor in India asks one (and only one) question in the average interaction: "What's wrong with you?" We present systematic evidence in this paper to show that these isolated facts represent common patterns. We find that the quality of care in low-income countries as measured by what doctors know is very low, and that the problem of low competence is compounded due to low effort--doctors provide lower standards of care for their patients than they know how to provide. We discuss how the properties and correlates of measures based on vignettes and observation may be used to evaluate policy changes. Finally, we outline the agenda in terms of further research and measurement.
format	Journal Article
author	Das, Jishnu Hammer, Jeffrey Leonard, Kenneth
author_facet	Das, Jishnu Hammer, Jeffrey Leonard, Kenneth
author_sort	Das, Jishnu
title	The Quality of Medical Advice in Low-Income Countries
title_short	The Quality of Medical Advice in Low-Income Countries
title_full	The Quality of Medical Advice in Low-Income Countries
title_fullStr	The Quality of Medical Advice in Low-Income Countries
title_full_unstemmed	The Quality of Medical Advice in Low-Income Countries
title_sort	quality of medical advice in low-income countries
publishDate	2012
url	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/5573
_version_	1764395529091940352

The Quality of Medical Advice in Low-Income Countries

Similar Items