Doctors and Big Pharma

A group of Harvard Medical School researchers have published a study the relationship between brand-name statins being prescribed by doctors who are compensated by the drug companies. They looked at 2444 Massachusetts physicians in the Medicare prescribing database in 2011. Here are the results:

Of the 2,444, 899 (36.8%) received industry payments, the most frequent being for company-sponsored meals. Statins accounted for 1,559,003 prescription claims; 356,807 (22.8%) were for brand-name drugs. For physicians with no industry payments listed, the median brand-name statin prescribing rate was 17.8%. For every $1000 in total payments received, the brand-name statin prescribing rate increased by 0.1%. Payments for educational training were associated with a 4.8% increase in the rate of brand-name prescribing; other forms of payments were not. They concluded that payments to physicians are associated with higher rates of prescribing brand-name statins. As the United States seeks to reign in the costs of prescription drugs and make them less expensive for patients, our findings are concerning.