Relationship between psychosocial physician characteristics and physician price awareness

revious research in the area of physician price awareness has identified the general lack of physicians' awareness regarding the prices their cash patients pay at the pharmacy. This research was an attempt to identify whether different demographic or psychosocial variables could be used to predict physician price awareness. Specifically, a hierarchical regression model was built to test whether psychosocial variables and demographic variable could explain price awareness differences better than demographic variables alone. A telephone survey of 200 primary care and internal medicine physicians was conducted asking physicians the estimate the cash price for 20 commonly prescribed prescription drugs at the usual quantities dispensed. Additionally, physicians were administered the 14-item Physician Belief Scale (two subscales: "Belief and Feeling" and "Burden") and the 20-item Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy (three subscales: "Perspective Taking," "Compassionate Care," and "Standing in the Patient's Shoes") for scores to be added as independent variables in the regression model. Price awareness, the dependent variable, was a score calculated by how many of the 20 drug prices physicians were able to estimate within +/- 20% of the Average Wholesale Price (AWP). The mean score for the price awareness variable was 7.94 (SD = 2.95). On average, physicians were able to estimate cash prices for approximately eight of the 20 sample drugs within +/- 20%. Hierarchical regression analysis revealed that the regression model (Model...