A review of Medicare Part D prescription data found that physicians receiving at least one industry payment from a pharmaceutical company for any specific brand-name drug were five times more likely to prescribe that drug over alternatives. (Photo: Shutterstock)
Doctors who took money from opioid manufacturers were 14.5 times more likely to prescribe those drugs over similar alternatives, according to CareDash.com's report."Possible Side Effects: Investigating the Connection Between Payments from Pharmaceutical Companies and the Prescribing Habits of Physicians."
The study, which cross-linked Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Open Payments data from 2014 through 2016 with Medicare Part D prescription data, also found that physicians receiving at least one industry payment from a pharmaceutical company for any specific brand-name drug were five times more likely to prescribe that drug over alternatives, including lower cost generic drugs. Between 2014 and 2016, physicians in the U.S. received a total of $6.2 billion in payments from pharmaceutical companies.
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"This analysis pulls back the curtain on the influence pharmaceutical companies may have on a patient's course of treatment and allows patients to make more informed healthcare choices," says CareDash's founder and CEO Ted Chan.
Dr. Aaron S. Kesselheim, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School/Brigham and Women's Hospital who reviewed the study, adds that the results demonstrate the importance of measures to improve transparency of these payments, such as the Physician Payments Sunshine Act of 2010, and "the need to ensure that physicians have access to reliable, non-industry-sponsored sources of drug information that can maximize evidence-based prescribing practices."
Other key findings include:
- The top drugs physicians received payments for in 2014 to 2016 paid by individual companies were Xarelto, $76.5 million paid by Janssen Pharmaceuticals; Invokana, $55.9 million paid by Janssen Pharmaceuticals; and Humira, $53.0 million paid by AbbVie Inc.
- The top payment categories from pharmaceutical companies to physicians for 2016 include promotional speaking or service, $561.9 million; royalty or license, $490.4 million; and consulting, $366.3 million.
- The top payers to physicians in 2014 to 2016 were Janssen, $197.6 million for drugs including Xarelto, Invokana, and Stelara; AstraZeneca, $167.3 million for drugs including Bydureon, Brilinta and Farxiga; Allergan, $136.5 million for drugs including Botox, Restasis and Linzess.
- Physicians who receive payments for Synthroid are 2.6 times more likely to be high-prescribers of the drug.
- Opioid manufacturers spent more than $43 million in payments for physicians from 2014 to 2016. More than $27 million were promotional speaking or service payments, and more than $8.5 million were food and beverage payments.
- The top opioid manufacturers providing payment to physicians were INSYS Therapeutics Inc., $16.0 million; Purdue Pharma L.P., $11.5 million; Depomed Inc., $5.7 million; and Pfizer Inc., $2.2 million.
- There were 74,272 payments on behalf of Subsys, an opioid drug from INSYS Therapeutics Inc. between 2014 and 2016, totaling $16 million.
- There were 6,501 payments made by opioid manufacturers to 997 physicians in Massachusetts between 2014 and 2016.
- On average, physicians in Florida, California, Ohio, Arizona, Texas and New York accepted more payments from opioid manufacturers than those from other states. Of these states, New York physicians received the highest average amount of payments on behalf of opioids: $1,014.93 per provider. Physicians in California received more than $5.4 million in total payments on behalf of opioids from 2014 to 2016.
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Katie Kuehner-Hebert
Katie Kuehner-Hebert is a freelance writer based in Running Springs, Calif. She has more than three decades of journalism experience, with particular expertise in employee benefits and other human resource topics.
