Forcing every clinic to get officially 'accredited' can actually end up making the average quality of healthcare worse, not better.
March 25, 2026
Original Paper
Accreditation as a Selection Technology in Health Care Markets
SSRN · 6337281
The Takeaway
Because accreditation is often used as a pass/fail gate for insurance payments, it can force high-quality but unaccredited providers out of business. This leaves the market to 'accredited' providers who might be worse at treating patients but better at paperwork.
From the abstract
Accreditation is widely used in regulated health care markets and is typically viewed as an information device that mitigates asymmetric information and improves patient choice. In many institutional settings, however, accreditation also determines eligibility for insured reimbursement and network participation, thereby conditioning access to the principal source of demand. This paper studies the implications of that eligibility function. In a model with heterogeneous provider quality and hetero