Friday – December 13^th, 2019

Tell me who you consult with and I’ll tell you how compliant you are: Can physicians affect patient adherence?

Joana Costa – CEF.UP (joint with Joint with Nuno Sousa Pereira and Ricardo Vicente)

ABSTRACT

“Objectives: Relying on a large longitudinal matched physician-prescription-patient dataset for all Portuguese e-prescriptions (SPMS, 2015-2017) we’ve extended the paper by Koulayev et al. (2017) which analyzes the contributions of doctor-specific, patient-specific, and drug-specific factors to the adherence decision, now applied to hypoglycemic agents and their pharmacotherapeutic groups.

Methods: We considered a large longitudinal dataset for all Portuguese e-prescriptions collected from Ministério da Saúde from January 1, 2015 till December 31, 2017 that contained any pharmaceutical used to treat Type 1 and Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus. We use high-dimensional fixed-effects to assess the influence of physicians on patient compliance. The dependent variable is the medication possession ratio for a particular refill, while the explanatory variables rely on patient demographics, physician characteristics and a set of controls which includes match-specific variables.

Results: So far, we rely on 1.204.987 observations and find that physicians are able to influence patient compliance. Further results to be computed will consider the impact of a pair physician-patient on the variation of the adherence which could tell us more information regarding this relationship.

Discussion: This paper extends to antidiabetic drugs, the determinants of patient adherence which could lead us to potential relevant policy implications such as the consideration of customized interventions among physician-patient pairs that will lead us to optimal results regarding compliance.”

 1:10 – 2:10 p.m. | Room 305