Background: The potential to lower pharmaceutical spending exists if physicians prescribe low-priced generics. This study aimed to empirically investigate the determinants of choosing low-priced generic drugs in South Korea.
Methods: The 2018 HIRA-NPS dataset was used for this study. Among 1.45 million individuals, we identified the patients who were prescribed atorvastatin 10 mg for more than 60 days in 2018 as the study subjects, separated the subjects into high- and low-priced groups based on their average unit price, and applied a series of logistic regression models to elucidate the factors affecting low-priced drug choice.
Results: Out of 60,984 subjects, only 10,228 (17%) were categorized into the low-priced group. The majority of the subjects (31%) were prescribed drugs at the maximum reimbursement price. Age of the subject, the frequency of visits to the institution, the existence of a usual source of care, and the institution type that a subject mainly visited for prescriptions were associated with being prescribed low-priced generics.
Conclusion: The association of being prescribed low-priced generics with the primary care institution and the usual source of care could be interpreted as evidence for the role of primary care in the continuity of patient-centred care. Creating health systems under which professionals act as perfect agents of a patient and/or an insurer is required.
Keywords: South Korea; a usual source of care; drug choice; generic drugs; low-priced generics.
Generic drugs with a discounted price compared to their corresponding brand-name drugs could be prescribed for patients. Therefore, spending on pharmaceuticals could be saved if physicians prescribed low-priced generics and/or patients switched from high-priced drugs to low-priced drugs. Policymakers have introduced several ways to encourage choosing low-priced generic drugs. This study focussed on the factors associated with choosing low-priced generic drugs in South Korea. Contrary to our expectations, only a few patients (17% of the total patients) choose low-priced generics, indicating potential to save pharmaceutical expenditure. Geriatric patients, patients who mainly visited primary healthcare institutions, and patients who had a usual source of care were more likely to choose low-priced generics. This study also suggested various ways to encourage choosing low-priced generic drugs in health systems.
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