Pharmaceutical sponsorships linked with more prescriptions

The practice of pharmaceutical representatives bringing lunches or inviting doctors out to fancy retreats has long been controversial. The practice was so controversial that Congress passed a law called the Physician Payments Sunshine Act, requiring that gifts and sponsorships from pharmaceutical had to be disclosed publicly. HHS then required that such disclosures had to be reported through it, centralizing the information and making it available for download. Around the same time, CMS also made Medicare prescription information available, allowing researchers to study the correlation between payments from pharmaceutical companies and physician prescriptions. One such study was recently published in JAMA.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the study found that there is indeed a correlation between receipt of industry-sponsored meals and an increased rate of prescribing the promoted medication. The paper is clear to point out that the conclusion is only a correlation, not a causation. Bloomberg published some interesting commentary exploring why that distinction is very important. The author of that editorial argues that maybe -- just maybe -- physicians are learning important information about the promoted medications that causes them to prescribe them more. More research needs to be done to figure out whether these sponsored meals are unduly affecting physician behavior, but regardless, it seems appropriate that consumers have this information available to them so they can decide whether to be wary.