Premium
Hospitals and the generic versus brand‐name prescription decision in the outpatient sector
Author(s) -
Pruckner Gerald J.,
Schober Thomas
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
health economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.55
H-Index - 109
eISSN - 1099-1050
pISSN - 1057-9230
DOI - 10.1002/hec.3774
Subject(s) - medical prescription , spillover effect , inpatient care , health care , medicine , ambulatory care , prescription drug , brand names , medical emergency , outpatient visits , family medicine , emergency medicine , business , nursing , marketing , economics , microeconomics , economic growth
Summary Health care payers try to reduce costs by promoting the use of cheaper generic drugs. We show strong interrelations in drug prescriptions between the inpatient and outpatient sectors by using a large administrative dataset from Austria. Patients with prior hospital visits have a significantly lower probability of receiving a generic drug in the outpatient sector. The size of the effect depends on both the patient and doctor characteristics, which could be related to the differences in hospital treatment and heterogeneity in the physicians' adherence to hospital choices. Our results suggest that hospital decisions create spillover costs in health care systems with separate funding for inpatient and outpatient care.