Effect of Copayment for Prescribed Drugs in Prescribing Behavior

概要

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This paper examines whether doctors' issuing of prescriptions was influenced by the introduction or end of copayment of patients for drug from September 1997 to June 1999. This analysis is a kind of researches how doctors consider patients' utility, especially their burden. We used health services bill data for all for the entire elderly population in two areas from January 1997 to December 1999. The data covers the entire period from September 1997 to June 1999 when copayment of patients for drug was implemented. This data has the advantage of being able to track the patients' medical history for 36 months. The sample for analysis is limited to drugs which are prescribed to each patients during this period. The dependent variables are the start or end of prescriptions, or total number of drugs, in each month. The estimated results denies the hypothesis that doctors are concerned only about their own income or appropriateness of treatment in the medical sense, however, do not reject the hypothesis that they take a concern about patients' utility including their copayment in addition to their own utility.
The Health Care Science Instituteの論文