A financial analysis research reveals that oncologists’ prescribing habits change after they have been visited by pharmaceutical gross sales reps — and it additionally reveals the adjustments don’t lengthen sufferers’ lives.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Pharmaceutical firm reps have been visiting docs for many years to inform them in regards to the newest medicine. However how does the apply have an effect on sufferers? A bunch of economists tried to reply that query. NPR prescription drugs correspondent Sydney Lupkin studies.
SYDNEY LUPKIN, BYLINE: When drug firm reps go to docs, it normally consists of lunch or dinner and a dialog a couple of new drug. These interactions are tracked as funds to physicians, and so they work. That’s, docs prescribe about 5% extra oncology medicine following a go to from a pharmaceutical consultant. That is in line with a brand new research revealed by the Nationwide Bureau of Financial Analysis this month. However the researchers additionally discovered that the apply does not make most cancers sufferers stay longer. Here is research writer Colleen Carey, assistant professor of economics and public coverage at Cornell College.
COLLEEN CAREY: It doesn’t appear that this cost induces physicians to modify to medicine with a mortality profit relative to the drug the affected person would have gotten in any other case.
LUPKIN: For his or her analysis, she and her colleagues used Medicare claims knowledge and the Open Funds Database, which tracks drug firm funds to docs. Whereas the sufferers being prescribed these new most cancers medicine did not stay longer, Carey additionally factors out that they did not stay shorter lives both. It was about equal. The business commerce group, which is named PhRMA, has a code of conduct for a way gross sales reps ought to work together with docs. The code was up to date in 2022, says Jocelyn Ulrich, the group’s vp of coverage and analysis.
JOCELYN ULRICH: We’re guaranteeing that there’s a fixed consideration from the business and guaranteeing that these are very significant and vital interactions and that they are compliant.
LUPKIN: The code says that if drug reps are shopping for docs a meal, it should be modest and cannot be a part of an leisure or leisure occasion. The objective must be training. Ulrich factors out that most cancers deaths within the U.S. have declined by 33% because the Nineteen Nineties, and new medicines are part of that.
Sydney Lupkin, NPR Information.
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https://npr.org/2024/04/19/1245972805/pharma-reps-have-visited-doctors-for-decades-what-impact-does-it-have-on-patient
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