Don’t Nudge Me: The Limits of Behavioral Economics in Medicine.

By Aaron E. Carroll. Aaron E. Carroll is a professor of pediatrics at Indiana University School of Medicine. Excerpts:

"Researchers randomly assigned more than 1,500 people to one of two groups. All had recently had heart attacks. One group received the usual care. The other received special electronic pill bottles that monitored patients’ use of medication. Those patients who took their drugs were entered into a lottery in which they had a 20 percent chance to receive $5 and a 1 percent chance to win $50 every day for a year.

That’s not all. The lottery group members could also sign up to have a friend or family member automatically be notified if they didn’t take their pills so that they could receive social support. They were given access to special social work resources. There was even a staff engagement adviser whose specific duty was providing close monitoring and feedback, and who would remind patients about the importance of adherence.

This was a kitchen-sink approach. It involved direct financial incentives, social support nudges, health care system resources and significant clinical management. It failed.

The time to first hospitalization for a cardiovascular problem or death was the same between the two groups. The time to any hospitalization and the total number of hospitalizations were the same. So were the medical costs. Even medication adherence — the process measure that might influence these outcomes — was no different between the two groups."

"The problem is that health has so many moving parts. The health care system has even more. Trying to improve any one aspect can make others worse. Behavioral economics may offer us some fascinating theories to test in controlled trials, but we have a long way to go before we can assume it’s a cure for what ails Americans."