Template-Type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0
Author-Name: Hsien-Ming Lien
Author-X-Name-First: Hsien-Ming 
Author-X-Name-Last: Lien
Author-Email: 
Author-Workplace-Name:National Cheng-Chi University, Department of Public Finance

Author-Name: Mingshan Lu
Author-X-Name-First: Mingshan
Author-X-Name-Last:   Lu
Author-Email: 
Author-Workplace-Name: University of Calgary, Department of Economics

Author-Name: Ching-To Albert Ma
Author-X-Name-First: Ching-To
Author-X-Name-Last:   Ma
Author-Email: ma@bu.edu
Author-Workplace-Name: Boston University Department of Economics

Author-Name: Thomas G. McGuire
Author-X-Name-First: Thomas
Author-X-Name-Last:   McGuire
Author-Email: 
Author-Workplace-Name: Harvard Medical School, Department of Health Care Policy


Title:Progress and Compliance in Alcohol Abuse Treatment


Abstract:Improving patient compliance with physicians’ treatment or prescription recommendations is an
important goal in medical practice. This paper examines the causal relationship between treatment
progress and patient compliance. We hypothesize that patients balance expected benefits and costs
during a treatment episode when deciding on compliance; a patient is more likely to follow medical
advice if doing so results in an expected net gain in his welfare or health benefit. We use a unique data
set of outpatient alcohol abuse treatment to identify a causal effect between treatment progress and
compliance. Treatment progress is measured by the clinician’s comments after each attended visit.
Compliance is measured by a client attending a scheduled appointment, as well as continuing with the
treatment episode. We find that a patient making progress is less likely to drop out of treatment.
However, we find no evidence that treatment progress raises the likelihood of a patient attending the
next scheduled visit. Our results are robust to controls for unobserved patient heterogeneity.
Length:32 pages
Creation-Date: 2006-07
Revision-Date: 
Publication-Status:
File-URL: http://www.bu.edu/econ/faculty/ma/compliance_July2006.pdf
File-Format: Application/pdf
File-Function: 
Number: WP2006-043
Classification-JEL:
Keywords:
Handle: RePEc:bos:wpaper:WP2006-043