Do information differences across U.S. physicians contribute to treatment disparities? This paper uses a unique new dataset to evaluate how changes in physician access to a decision-relevant drug database affect prescribing decisions. Our results indicate that doctors using the reference have a significantly greater propensity to prescribe generic drugs, are faster to begin prescribing new generics, and prescribe a more diverse set of products. Notably, physicians using the reference database are not faster to prescribe new branded drugs. Given that a new generic drug resembles its branded equivalent clinically, these results are consistent with database users responding primarily to the increased accessibility of non-clinical information such as drug price and insurance formulary data; the results also suggest improvements to physician information access have important aggregate implications for the costs and efficiency of medical care. We address possible selection effects in physician types by relying on within-doctor variation and an instrument for adoption timing that is based on the marketing strategy of the drug reference firm.

中文翻译：

---

信息技术对新药扩散的影响

美国医生之间的信息差异是否会导致治疗差异？本文使用一个独特的新数据集来评估医生对与决策相关的药物数据库的访问的变化如何影响处方决策。我们的结果表明，使用参考文献的医生更倾向于开仿制药，更快地开始开新仿制药，并开出更多样化的产品。值得注意的是，使用参考数据库的医生开出新品牌药物的速度并不快。鉴于一种新的仿制药在临床上与其品牌等效物相似，这些结果与数据库用户主要对非临床信息（如药品价格和保险处方数据）的可访问性的增加做出反应一致；结果还表明，改善医生信息访问对医疗保健的成本和效率具有重要的综合影响。我们依靠医生内部的变异和基于药物参考公司营销策略的采用时间工具来解决医生类型中可能的选择效应。