Patient Knowledge and Antibiotic Abuse: Evidence from an Audit Study in China

Abstract

We ask how patient knowledge of appropriate antibiotic usage affects both physicians prescribing behavior and the physician-patient relationship. We conduct an audit study in which a pair of simulated patients with identical flu-like complaints visits the same physician. Simulated patient A is instructed to ask a question that showcases his/her knowledge of appropriate antibiotic use, whereas patient B is instructed to say nothing beyond describing his/her symptoms. We find that a patient's knowledge of appropriate antibiotics use reduces both antibiotic prescription rates and drug expenditures. Such knowledge also increases physicians' information provision about possible side effects, but has a negative impact on the quality of the physician-patient interactions.

Price offers of pharmaceutical procurement in China: evidence from Guangdong province

“…The government procures chemical products listed on the NEDL, which has 24 categories and 214 subgroups according to therapeutic usage. In this article, we restrict our sample to antibiotics since the usage has been maintained at a high level [11], and they have the largest number of observations. The sample is first clustered by the Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical (ATC) code and further classified into 157 product groups according to their strength, pharmaceutical form, and package.…”

http://www.omicsonline.com/open-access/child-pornography-users--child-contact-offenders-applications-for-law-enforcement-prosecution-and-forensic-mental-health-1522-4821-1000283.php?aid=63682

“…Nevertheless, in China, patient demand is prevalent. Patients have become so powerful that they have "ordered" physicians' prescriptions (Currie, Lin & Zhang, 2011). Thus, there should be more education for the general public about the limitations and risks of medicine.…”

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“…High rates of paediatric use of antibiotics by healthcare providers (hereafter 'providers') are a key driver of antibiotic resistance in China [1,2], where rates of antibiotic resistance to most common bacteria are particularly high [3]. Prescription rates for paediatric patients using primary healthcare and hospital outpatient clinics range from 57.7% to 80.3% [4][5][6][7], well above the 30% rate recommended by World Health Organisation [8].…”

“…However, few studies have been conducted in China [2,[20][21][22]. Our search of English-language (MEDLINE Ovid) and Chinese (Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure) databases located two qualitative studies reporting providers' perceptions of influences on their ARB, both based in rural China [23,24].…”