Payments to rheumatologists by pharmaceutical companies, whether through food and beverages or consulting fees, are linked with a higher likelihood of prescribing drugs and higher Medicare spending, according to a new study published Feb. 2 in Mayo Clinic Proceedings.
Alí Duarte-García, MD, of the division of rheumatology in the department of medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., led the study.
Researchers conducted a cross-sectional analysis of Medicare Part B Public Use File, Medicare Part D Public Use File, and Open Payments data for 2013-2015. They included prescription drugs that accounted for 80% of the total Medicare pharmaceutical expenditures in rheumatology.
They then calculated annual average drug cost per beneficiary per year, the percentage of rheumatologists who received payments, and the average payment per physician per drug per year. Industry payments were categorized as either food/beverage or consulting/compensation.
Multivariable regression models were used to assess links between industry payments, prescribing patterns, and prescription drug spending.
‘Directly associated’ with prescribing probability
The authors concluded that “pharmaceutical company payments to rheumatologists were directly associated with the probability of the physician’s prescribing a drug marketed by that company, the proportion of prescriptions that are for that drug, and the resulting Medicare expenditures.”
The authors noted that food and beverage payments were associated with increased Medicare reimbursement amounts for all drugs except rituximab.
The article includes examples that help quantify the link between payments and prescribing.
The authors wrote that for each $100 in food/beverage payments, Medicare reimbursement increased 6% to 44%. The increases were particularly high for infliximab and rACTH (repository corticotropin injection), “whereby a payment of $100 to a prescriber of these drugs was associated with increases of approximately $72,000 and $30,000 in Medicare reimbursements, respectively. For most of the other drugs, for every $100 in payments, the Medicare reimbursement increased by $8,000 to $13,000.”
The associations were strongest for food and beverage payments even though those were for lower dollar amounts.
The researchers found that every $100 in food and beverage payments, which also include gifts, entertainment, or educational materials, was linked with more than twofold higher probability of prescribing and higher Medicare reimbursements than for every $1,000 paid in consulting fees and compensation.
That finding and findings from previous studies, they say, “suggest that the current approach to regulating industry influence, which focuses on disclosure of large payments, may be inadequate.”
Aaron P. Mitchell, MD, a medical oncologist and health services researcher with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, told this news organization that the findings regarding rACTH show the potential harm of industry payments that are linked with prescribing.
The drug is a naturally produced hormone used for both rheumatologic and neurologic conditions. “Since it is an unpatentable drug – really just a hormone – it’s kind of grandfathered in and never had to get [Food and Drug Administration] approval for its current indications,” Dr. Mitchell said.
The drug, which costs nearly $230,000 per Medicare beneficiary, hasn’t been tested head to head in large randomized trials against much cheaper rheumatology drugs, such as prednisone.
In the case of infliximab, he noted, for every $100 in food/beverage payments, there was an increase of $72,000 in Medicare spending.
Dr. Mitchell studies industry influence in a variety of specialties and said rheumatology follows the universal pattern, although the drugs used in the specialty are more expensive than in many specialties.
He agrees with the authors that focusing on disclosures to address the problem is probably not enough.
“We’ve been in this period of full and open disclosure for going on 10 years, and we haven’t really seen a decline in these payments,” he said.