Hospitals and the generic versus brand-name prescription decision in the outpatient sector

Gerald Pruckner and Thomas Schober

No 2016-05, CDL Aging, Health, Labor working papers from The Christian Doppler (CD) Laboratory Aging, Health, and the Labor Market, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria

Abstract: Healthcare 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 healthcare systems with separate funding for inpatient and outpatient care.

Keywords: Prescription decision; generic drugs; physician behavior; hospitals (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H51 I11 I13 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28 pages
Date: 2016-11
Note: English
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Hospitals and the generic versus brand‐name prescription decision in the outpatient sector (2018)
Working Paper: Hospitals and the generic versus brand-name prescription decision in the outpatient sector (2016)
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