Are Financial Payments From the Pharmaceutical Industry Associated With Physician Prescribing? A Systematic Review

Mitchell AP, Trivedi NU, Gennarelli RL, Chimonas S, Tabatabai SM, Goldberg J, Diaz LA Jr, Korenstein D. Ann Intern Med. 2020 Nov 24. [CrossRef] [PubMed]

Financial payments from the drug industry to U.S. physicians are common and may influence physicians' clinical decision making and drug prescribing. The authors searched MEDLINE (Ovid), Embase, the Cochrane Library, Web of Science, and EconLit for studies examining an association between receipt of industry payments (exposure) and prescribing (outcome). Thirty-six studies comprising 101 analyses were included. Most studies (n = 30) identified a positive association between payments and prescribing in all analyses; the remainder (n = 6) had a mix of positive and null findings. No study had only null findings. Of 101 individual analyses, 89 identified a positive association. Payments were associated with increased prescribing of the paying company's drug, increased prescribing costs, and increased prescribing of branded drugs. Nine studies assessed and found evidence of a temporal association; 25 assessed and found evidence of a dose–response relationship.