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FRIDAY, Feb. 1, 2019 (HealthDay News) — Physicians who receive direct pharmaceutical payments for opioid prescribing prescribe more opioids, especially hydrocodone and oxycodone, according to a study published online Jan. 22 in Addiction<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Thuy D. Nguyen, Ph.D., from Indiana University in Bloomington, and colleagues linked data on all promotions by pharmaceutical companies directly to physicians with physician-level data on opioid prescriptions filled in a federal insurance program. Data were included for 865,347 U.S. physicians with prescriptions filled in Medicare Part D.<\/p>\n
The researchers found that compared with their peers who did not receive payments, prescribers who received opioid-specific payments prescribed 8,784 opioid daily doses more per year. A total of 5,161 and 3,624 additional daily doses of hydrocodone and oxycodone, respectively, were associated with receipt of hydrocodone- and oxycodone-related payments. A total of 1,124 more daily doses per year were prescribed by prescribers receiving any fentanyl-specific payments compared with their peers. Among 63,062 recipients of opioid-specific payments, a 1 percent increase in the amount of payments was tied to 50 daily doses of opioid prescription.<\/p>\n
“These findings support the significance of ongoing efforts to enhance transparency and efficient regulation regarding pharmaceutical marketing,” the authors write.<\/p>\n