Do soft cost-control measures change productivity? - preferred statin prescribing in Germany

How can organizations change experts' practice styles? We analyze physician responses to changes in preferred drug policies in a class of drugs with heterogenous efficacy-safety-cost profiles. Aimed at reducing inefficiencies, preferred drug policies recommend a preferred drug among a set of equivalent drugs. Policies include an indirect financial risk to physicians when non-compliant. We empirically explore physician responses to changes in the number of preferred drugs. We develop a typology based on a physician's compliance with the standard pre-/post-policy. If at all, we do not find strong effects suggesting that preferred drug policies were not very effective in changing practice.