Health Information Seeking Behaviors and Consumer Reponse to Scope of Practice Expansion

This paper leverages state level variation in scope of practice (SOP) regulation to identify the effect of expanded SOP on healthcare consumer interest. Focusing on google trends search intensity as a proxy for consumer interest this paper utilizes a two-way fixed effects model to estimate the consumer response to healthcare policy. Further I utilize an event study framework to detect a treatment effect of SOP. I find no statistical evidence of an effect of SOP on search intensity utilizing the event study framework. The two-way fixed effects model indicates a positive effect of SOP on consumer interest without controls but no significance with any other level of controls. Taking all of the evidence into account it does not appear that there is a strong statistical effect of SOP on search intensity.