Author Interviews, Cost of Health Care, Education, JAMA / 11.05.2016
Payments to Physicians For Educational Training Linked To Increased Brand-Name Statin Use
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Dr. James Song-Jeng Yeh, MD
Brigham and Women's Hospital
Boston MA
MedicalResearch.com: What is the purpose for this study?
Dr. Yeh: A number of factors influence physicians’ prescribing behavior, including physician’s knowledge and understanding of the drugs. Pharmaceutical detailing and financial incentives may affect such behavior. My interest in evidence-based medicine and how medical knowledge is translated into practice lead me to think about how physicians’ financial relationships with the pharmaceutical industry may affect prescribing patterns.
In our study, we linked the Massachusetts physicians open payment database with the Medicare drug prescription claims database to determine if financial relationships with the industry are associated with increased brand-name statin drug prescribing. The open payment database reports payments that physicians receive from pharmaceutical and medical device industries. The open payment database when linked to the drug prescription claims database allowed us to answer this question.
We looked at year 2011, when two of the most commonly prescribed brand-name statin drugs (Lipitor and Crestor) were not yet available in generic formulation.
The outcome measured was what percentage of all statin prescription claims (both generic and brand-name) were brand-names.
(more…)