Health‐care quality and information failure: Evidence from Nigeria
研究尼日利亚患者能否有效评估医疗服务质量，发现满意度与医护诊断能力显著相关，但与基础设施等表面特征无关，表明患者能识别部分关键质量要素。
Low-quality health services are a problem across low- and middle-income countries. Information failure may contribute, as patients may have insufficient knowledge to discern the quality of health services. That decreases the likelihood that patients will sort into higher quality facilities, increasing demand for better health services. This paper presents results from a health survey in Nigeria to investigate whether patients can evaluate health service quality effectively. Specifically, this paper demonstrates that although more than 90% of patients agree with any positive statement about the quality of their local health services, satisfaction is significantly associated with the diagnostic ability of health workers at the facility. Satisfaction is not associated with more superficial characteristics such as infrastructure quality or prescriptions of medicines. This suggests that patients may have sufficient information to discern some of the most important elements of quality, but that alternative measures are crucial for gauging the overall quality of care.