Assessing pharmacists' willingness to accept third party prescription contracts using conjoint analysis
Abstract
The major objectives for this study were the following: (a) to identify the most important attributes associated with pharmacists' willingness to accept third-party prescription contracts, (b) to evaluate the effect of selected pharmacy setting variables, insurance variables, and financial variables on the three most important attributes, and on pharmacists' willingness to accept third-party prescription contracts, (c) to determine the part-worth contribution of the most important attributes and attribute levels employing the decompositional technique exemplified by conjoint analysis to assess pharmacists' willingness to accept third-party prescription contracts, (d) to evaluate the ability of the regression model obtained for the nine observed third-party contracts to predict willingness to accept third-party contracts for a set of three holdout contracts. Questionnaires containing a total of twelve hypothetical contracts were presented to a randomly selected sample of 1600 independent community pharmacy owners/managers. The net response rate was 43.4 percent and the overall mean willingness to accept the nine observed contracts was 36.8 percent. Results from the attribute importance ratings indicate that dispensing fee, average wholesale price, and lag-time were the three most important attributes. A one-third fractional factorial design was employed to develop nine contracts with each contract containing a combination of dispensing fee at $4.50, \$3.00, or $1.50; average wholesale price at AWP, AWP-5 percent, or AWP-10 percent; and lag-time at 15 days, 30 days, or 60 days. A one-way analysis of variance was used to detect differences among the categories for the setting, insurance, and financial variables. If the overall F-ratio was significant, a Scheffe test was performed to determine which means differed. Independent variables which differed significantly among the categories for the important attributes and willingness to accept third-party contracts included pharmacy age, competition level, number of third-party plans honored, and total number of prescriptions dispensed yearly. Results obtained from the aggregated regression indicate that dispensing fee at $4.50 (b = .573) was the most important attribute level. The next levels consist of dispensing fee at \$3.00 (b =.269), AWP (b =.170), lag-time of 15 days (b =.124), lag-time of 30 days (b =.120), and AWP-5 percent (b = $-$.008), respectively.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Mason, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Pharmaceuticals
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