Health & Wellness
Now There’s Proof:
Docs Who Get Company Cash Tend to
Prescribe More Brand-Name Meds
by Charles Ornstein, Ryann Grochowski Jones
and Mike Tigas, ProPublica
T
he more money doctors receive from
drug and medical device companies,
the more brand-name drugs they tend
to prescribe, a new ProPublica analysis shows.
Even a meal can make a difference.
Doctors have long disputed that the
payments they receive from pharmaceutical
companies have any relationship to how they
prescribe drugs.
There’s been little evidence to settle the
matter — until now.
A ProPublica analysis has found for the
first time that doctors who receive payments
28 HimPower September 2016
from the medical industry do indeed tend
to prescribe drugs differently than their colleagues who don’t. And the more money they
receive, on average, the more brand-name
medications they prescribe.
We matched records on payments from
pharmaceutical and medical device makers
in 2014 with corresponding data on doctors’
medication choices in Medicare’s prescription
drug program*.
Doctors who got money from drug and
device makers—even just a meal– prescribed
a higher percentage of brand-name drugs