Dive Brief:
- A recent Modern Healthcare analysis of the Open Payments database and Part D data found that 25% of Medicare's top 400 prescribers (at least $1 million in Medicare Part D program) in 2013 took pharma consulting fees or other financial compensation of those drugs prescribed.
- In addition, 20% of 2,200 physicians who prescribed $500,000 of a particular drug received money from the manufacturer and 17% of 36,000 providers who prescribed $100,000 or more of a single drug also accepted pharma fees.
- A 2013 study of ProPublica's database of pharma payments revealed that 21 physicians made more than $500,000 in speaking fees, with one physician making more than $1 million. The Physician Payments Sunshine Act requires companies and healthcare providers to reveal monetary payments between pharma and physicians.
Dive Insight:
Although many insist that pharma payments do influence prescription numbers, CMS said in a statement that the payments don't necessarily equate a conflict of interest. "Information about financial relationships alone is not enough to decide whether they're beneficial or improper," the agnecy said. "Just because there are financial ties doesn't mean that anyone is doing anything wrong."
Some providers disagree. Dr. Steven Nissen, cardiovascular chair at the Cleveland Clinic, described it as "an enormous problem." Eric Campbell, a sociologist at Harvard Medical School, said "it is frankly magical thinking to believe that those two things are not related."
A recent study by the Social Science Research Network discovered that payments do influence physicians' prescribing behavior. Doctors who accepted free meals, speaking fees, consulting payments and other compensation from a pharmaceutical manufacturer were more likely to prescribe that company's brand name products versus competing brands and generic versions.