Ask Your Doctor Whether This Product Is Right for You: A Bayesian Joint Model for Patient Drug Requests and Physician Prescriptions

Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A, Forthcoming

IIM Bangalore Research Paper No. 526

46 Pages Posted: 9 Nov 2016 Last revised: 7 Apr 2020

See all articles by Bhuvanesh Pareek

Bhuvanesh Pareek

Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Indore

Qiang Liu

Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr School of Business, Purdue University

Pulak Ghosh

Indian Institute of Management (IIMB), Bangalore

Date Written: December 1, 2017

Abstract

The goal of this research is to jointly study physician prescription decisions and patient drug request behaviors. We have adopted a binary logit model and a multinomial logit (MNL) model to study patient drug request data with excessive zero requests and a MNL model to capture physician prescription decisions. These models are further joined by a flexible nonparametric multivariate distribution for their random effects. We also adopt an analytically consistent expression for interaction effects in our non-linear and joint modeling framework. We apply our model to a unique physician panel data set from the Erectile Dysfunction category. Our key empirical findings include the following: (1) the triggering of drug requests by DTCA is complex with category level DTCA reducing patients' probabilities of making drug requests and drug specific DTCA driving drug requests for the advertised drug; (2) patient characteristics may play a role in both the impact of DTCA on drug requests and the impact of patient requests on physician prescription decisions; (3) patient drug requests have a positive impact on physician prescription decisions and patients can be consistent with physicians in choosing a drug based on their diagnosis levels and some unobserved factors; (4) there are significant correlations among physician-level random effects that drive both patient drug requests and physician prescription decisions, which validates the joint modeling approach.

Keywords: Zero-inflated, Bayesian joint model, Health care, DTCA, Advertising, Doctor patient interaction

Suggested Citation

Pareek, Bhuvanesh and Liu, Qiang and Ghosh, Pulak, Ask Your Doctor Whether This Product Is Right for You: A Bayesian Joint Model for Patient Drug Requests and Physician Prescriptions (December 1, 2017). Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A, Forthcoming, IIM Bangalore Research Paper No. 526, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2866334 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2866334

Bhuvanesh Pareek (Contact Author)

Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Indore ( email )

Prabandh Sikhar
Rau-Pithampur Road
Indore, Madhya Pradesh 453331
India

Qiang Liu

Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr School of Business, Purdue University ( email )

403 Mitch Daniels Blvd.
West Lafayette, IN 47907
United States

Pulak Ghosh

Indian Institute of Management (IIMB), Bangalore ( email )

Bannerghatta Road
Bangalore, Karnataka 560076
India

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