Influencing physician prescribing.
The drug use process suffers from problems related to quality and cost that have not responded well to administrative or educational interventions. In many cases, attempts to improve the quality of physician prescribing have been clumsy, often based on intuition. This article begins by describing the drug use process and the role of prescribing in that process. In the following section, we describe what is known about how physicians make drug choice decisions. The paper concludes with suggestions, based on evidence, about the design of strategies for influencing prescribing.
Segal
R
R
Pharmacy Health Care Administration, University of Florida, Gainesville 32610, USA.
Wang
F
F
D000329:Advertising; D003258:Consumer Behavior; D004345:Drug Industry; D011307:Drug Prescriptions / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006801:Humans; D010565:Persuasive Communication; D010818:Practice Patterns, Physicians'