Opioid Industry Meal Payments and Associated Physician Prescibing
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Date
2018-12
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Abstract
An extensive literature demonstrates a relationship between promotional activity towards physicians from drug manufacturers and subsequent prescribing of marketed products. A similar association has been demonstrated in a recent study focusing on opioid payments and opioid prescribing using multivariate linear regression (Hadland et al.) This article replicates this recent study by using updated meal payments and claims data and extends the research by examining whether a physician’s specialty, gender, and geographic region of practice help better explain the relationship between opioid meal payments and prescribing. An association was found between opioid meal payments and opioid prescribing, which confirms prior study findings. The analysis found that specialty was an important predictor of opioid claims and that pain management specialists and physicians in rehabilitation-based specialties are associated with higher opioid claims. The analysis did not find evidence to suggest this relationship is different based on physician gender or region of practice.
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opioid epidemic, pharmaceutical marketing, open payments, CMS