Physician Payments from Industry Are Associated with Greater Medicare Part D Prescribing Costs.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The U.S. Physician Payments Sunshine Act mandates the reporting of payments or items of value received by physicians from drug, medical device, and biological agent manufacturers. The impact of these payments on physician prescribing has not been examined at large scale.

Methods

We linked public Medicare Part D prescribing data and Sunshine Act data for 2013. Physician payments were examined descriptively within specialties, and then for association with prescribing costs and patterns using regression models. Models were adjusted for potential physician-level confounding features, including sex, geographic region, and practice size.

Results

Among 725,169 individuals with Medicare prescribing data, 341,644 had documented payments in the OPP data (47.1%). Amo

SUBMITTER: Perlis RH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4868346 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature