Financial incentives and prescribing behavior in primary care

Publikation: Beitrag in FachzeitschriftArtikelForschungPeer-Review

Autoren

  • Olivia Bodnar
  • Hugh Gravelle
  • Nils Gutacker
  • Annika Herr

Organisationseinheiten

Externe Organisationen

  • University of York
  • Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf
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Details

OriginalspracheEnglisch
Seiten (von - bis)696-713
Seitenumfang18
FachzeitschriftHealth Economics (United Kingdom)
Jahrgang33
Ausgabenummer4
PublikationsstatusVeröffentlicht - 2 März 2024

Abstract

Many healthcare systems prohibit primary care physicians from dispensing the drugs they prescribe due to concerns that this encourages excessive, ineffective or unnecessarily costly prescribing. Using data from the English National Health Service for 2011–2018, we estimate the impact of physician dispensing rights on prescribing behavior at the extensive margin (comparing practices that dispense and those that do not) and the intensive margin (comparing practices with different proportions of patients to whom they dispense). We control for practices selecting into dispensing based on observable (OLS, entropy balancing) and unobservable practice characteristics (2SLS). We find that physician dispensing increases drug costs per patient by 3.1%, due to more, and more expensive, drugs being prescribed. Reimbursement is partly based on a fixed fee per package dispensed and we find that dispensing practices prescribe smaller packages. As the proportion of the practice population for whom they can dispense increases, dispensing practices behave more like non-dispensing practices.

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Financial incentives and prescribing behavior in primary care. / Bodnar, Olivia; Gravelle, Hugh; Gutacker, Nils et al.
in: Health Economics (United Kingdom), Jahrgang 33, Nr. 4, 02.03.2024, S. 696-713.

Publikation: Beitrag in FachzeitschriftArtikelForschungPeer-Review

Bodnar, O, Gravelle, H, Gutacker, N & Herr, A 2024, 'Financial incentives and prescribing behavior in primary care', Health Economics (United Kingdom), Jg. 33, Nr. 4, S. 696-713. https://doi.org/10.1002/hec.4793
Bodnar O, Gravelle H, Gutacker N, Herr A. Financial incentives and prescribing behavior in primary care. Health Economics (United Kingdom). 2024 Mär 2;33(4):696-713. doi: 10.1002/hec.4793
Bodnar, Olivia ; Gravelle, Hugh ; Gutacker, Nils et al. / Financial incentives and prescribing behavior in primary care. in: Health Economics (United Kingdom). 2024 ; Jahrgang 33, Nr. 4. S. 696-713.
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