An Unhealthy Relationship between Physicians and Pharma?
Recent evidence shows that payments to physicians by the pharmaceutical industry influence physician prescribing behavior in the form of increased prescription of brand-name drugs, expensive and low-cost drugs, increased prescription of payer company drugs, etc.
By the latest count, pharmaceutical companies pay doctors about $2 billion annually for consulting, promotional talks, and meals.
In fact nearly half (48%) of providers – including teaching hospitals, physicians, physician assistants and advanced practice nurses – still engage in the practice of accepting transfers of value from drugmakers. ??
The conflict of interest created by this practice has been debated, with some claiming doctors are not influenced by the payments, while others have convincingly disputed this idea.
Evidence of the influence comes in a number of forms:
Researchers at Sloan-Kettering investigated the relationship between the pharma industry and physicians and used their findings as the basis for their call to ban industry payments to physicians.
But the gathering movement to implement more industry and legislative guardrails is likely to face headwinds.
In the meantime, organizations who use HealthCorum can request a report from us that analyzes the financial relationships providers in their networks have with drug and medical device companies.
Having this insight helps identify providers to work with on mitigating conflicts of interest.
Learn more at www.HealtCorum.com