I examine effects of a health care system's policy to publicly disclose patient ratings of its physicians. I find evidence that this policy leads to performance improvement by the disclosed, subjective ratings and also by undisclosed, objective measures of quality. These effects are consistent with multitasking theory, in that physicians respond to the disclosure by providing more of a shared input—time with patients—that benefits performance by ratings and underlying quality. I also find, as predicted by information cascade theory, that the ratings become jammed to some degree near initially disclosed values. Specifically, raters observe the pattern of initial ratings and follow suit by providing similar ratings. Finally, I find evidence that physicians anticipate rating jamming and so concentrate their effort on earlier performance in order to set a pattern of high ratings that later ratings follow. These results demonstrate that the disclosure of subjective ratings can benefit performance broadly but can also shift effort toward earlier performance.

中文翻译：

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公开医师评级：绩效影响和变更评级共识的难度

我研究了卫生保健系统政策的影响，该政策公开披露了其医生对患者的评价。我发现有证据表明，该政策通过公开的，主观的评级以及未公开的，客观的质量衡量标准，可以提高绩效。这些效果与多任务理论相一致，即医生通过提供更多的共享输入（与患者在一起的时间）来响应披露，这可以通过评分和基本质量来提高绩效。正如信息级联理论所预测的那样，我还发现评级在某种程度上接近最初披露的值。具体来说，评分者会观察初始评分的模式，并通过提供相似的评分来跟风。最后，我发现有证据表明，医师会预期评级受到干扰，因此将精力集中在较早的表现上，以便树立后来评级随之而来的高评级模式。这些结果表明，主观评分的披露可以广泛地有益于绩效，但也可以将工作转向早期绩效。