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Pharmaceutical company marketing negatively influences prescribing
EurekAlert! Science News Releases • • health
Key Points:
- A Cochrane review of 93 studies finds that pharmaceutical companies’ payments, gifts, and free meals to doctors lead to more frequent, less appropriate, and more expensive prescribing, which can harm patients and healthcare systems.
- Marketing strategies such as sales rep visits, gifts, and payments are strongly linked to increased prescribing of promoted drugs, often regardless of clinical necessity or cost-effectiveness.
- The review highlights a dose-response relationship where doctors receiving more paid-for meals from drug companies prescribe more of those companies’ drugs, including opioids, contributing to public health crises like the opioid epidemic.
- Conflict-of-interest policies in hospitals and medical centers that restrict industry interactions with doctors show promise in improving prescribing appropriateness and reducing negative impacts from pharmaceutical promotion.
- Researchers emphasize that the issue is systemic rather than individual, and that stricter institutional policies can mitigate the influence of pharmaceutical marketing on prescribing behavior.
