Opinion: Do as the doctor says, not as he or she does
Merely giving patients more information isn't likely to help them make better health care decisions. Nudges and financial incentives may work better.
Doctors are full of advice: Eat healthy. Exercise. Don’t miss your medications. Don’t get that unnecessary test.
The premise behind this advice is simple: most people have little medical knowledge and doctors, by giving their patients more and better information about their health and available treatments, can help them make better decisions. But health education isn’t just the cornerstone of the patient-doctor relationship, it’s also the backbone of an enormous number of policies designed to improve public health.
It turns out that doctors don’t always follow their own advice, at least not as well as we might expect them to. That may have implications for
