Dive Brief:
- Physicians' rates of acceptance of industry payments like meals, consulting and promotional fees from pharmaceutical and medical device companies vary significantly based on region, who owns the hospital where they work or are affiliated with, and what type of hospital it is, according to a new ProPublica analysis.
- New Jersey, where many major drug companies are based, had the highest percentage of industry interactions with nearly eight in 10 doctors working at New Jersey hospitals accepting payments in 2014.
- Aside from New Jersey, the other states with the highest rates of industry payments to hospital-affilliated physicians were in the South.
Dive Insight:
Other states with the highest rates of industry payments to hospital-affilliated physicians included Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida, South Carolina and Alabama, which all had rates above 76% compared to the national average of 66%. Vermont had the lowest rate at 19%.
The subject raises debate due to studies that have identified an association between industry payments and higher rates of brand-name prescribing, ProPublica reported, with some advocates arguing for limits or transparency to allow consumers to make informed decisions about providers who may be weighing outside factors in their care.
“Maybe they’re prescribing or treating you as a patient not based on evidence but rather based on markets or industry gain or personal gain,” argued Dr. Kelly Thibert, president of the American Medical Student Association.
Among other key findings in the analysis were that cancer hospitals and specialty hospitals often had the highest rates of physicians accepting high-dollar payments, and that state and hospital system regulations were also factors. It highlighted California-based Kaiser Permanente as an example of a system that actively works to ban such payments and keep industry reps from walking halls and providing meals.
At the other end, among hospitals with at least 50 affiliated doctors, the analysis pinpointed Tennessee's Tenet-owned St. Francis Hospital-Bartlett as the one with the highest proportion of physicians taking industry payments at a rate of 95%.