The effect of medication costs on physicians' drug selection

To determine the physicians' knowledge of medication costs and its effect on drug selection.

The study was conducted between April 2007 and June 2007 on 245 physicians providing healthcare at outpatient clinics of different institutes at the city center of Ankara, Turkey. The data were collected by using questionnaires designed to obtain demographic characteristics of physicians, and assess factors affecting their drug selection based on knowledge of substances, producers and costs of five commonly prescribed commercial drugs.

A total of 245 physicians responded, while 53 (21.6 %) were general practitioners, 145 (59.2 %) were resident physicians and 47 (19.2 %) were specialists. Of 1,225 medications that were commonly prescribed, the physicians knew the substance of 1,072 (87.5 %) medications and producers of 565 (46.1) medications. The costs of all drugs were overestimated or underestimated by physicians with a difference of 21.9 %. The factor most significantly affecting the drug selection was drug efficiency (39.4 %) whereas its cost had little effect (11.6 %). A significant difference was found among physicians in respect of the effect of insurance/legal limitations and producer of medication on drug selection (p=0.002, p=0.004, respectively). There were also significant differences in drug selection among institutes.

It was determined that the physicians did not pay attention to the cost of drugs, were unaware of their prices, and prescribed expensive drugs instead of cheap ones even though the latter were available (Tab. 3, Ref. 16). Full Text in free PDF www.bmj.sk.