New Delhi: Doctors who receive gifts from pharmaceutical companies are more likely to prescribe expensive versions of medicines and more drugs per patient, a US study released on Wednesday suggested.
The study is among the first to quantitatively measure the impacts of such gifts and challenges claims by sections of pharmaceutical industry executives that industry gifts are not intended to influence prescriptions doctors write.
Health policy researchers who analysed prescription patterns and values of gifts to doctors — which ranged from a dozen donuts valued at $7 (Rs 455) to $200,000 (Rs 1.3 crore) in cash — have found that gifts of any size had an effect on prescriptions and larger gifts had a bigger impact.
"Something as small as a pen, a mug or a meal given to a physician compromises patient health," Adriane Fugh-Berman, professor of pharmacology at the Georgetown University Medical Centre who led the study, told The Telegraph over phone. "Doctors tell themselves they can’t be bought but research shows they’re more likely to prescribe drugs from companies from whom they’ve received gifts."
The study comes at a time the Indian government is examining proposals to curb the flow of pharmaceutical industry gifts travel and other freebies to doctors. It seeks to do so through a set of rules that will prohibit the industry from offering gifts to physicians or their family members.
Fugh-Berman and her colleagues used two datasets – mandatory reports filed by pharmaceutical companies listing gifts provided to healthcare providers in the Washington DC area and prescription information – to study links between prescription writing and gift-taking.
The study’s findings, published on Wednesday in the journal PLOS One, suggest that gift recipients wrote over a year on average 892 prescriptions, more than twice the 389 written by healthcare providers who had not received gifts.
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