Regulating Health Care Quality in an Information Age

Recent technological innovations have promoted widespread access to health-related information, raising important questions about the future of a health care regulatory system premised on the persistence of information failures. This Article analyzes the implications of the health information revolution for each of the three major types of health care regulation: market-displacing regulation (such as professional licensure), marketchanneling regulation (such as pay-for-performance initiatives), and market-facilitating regulation (such as quality reporting programs). By reducing the costs of information inputs into the regulatory process, the health information revolution will facilitate expanded regulation. At the same time, it should prompt a shift of focus from market-displacing regulations to market-channeling and market-facilitating regulations that will help consumers take advantage of newly available information about quality. Evidence suggests that this shift has in fact begun, but that