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Forty-three percent of pediatricians receive industry payments
A significant proportion of pediatricians received payments from industry sources, such as pharmaceutical and device manufacturers, with the greatest amount of payments associated with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder treatments and vaccines, according to recent research in Pediatrics.
“Conflicts of interest between physicians and pharmaceutical/medical device manufactures have received considerable attention,” Kavita Parikh, MD, MSHS, of the division of hospitalist medicine at Children’s National Medical Center and George Washington School of Medicine, and colleagues wrote. “The Physician Payments Sunshine Act, recently enacted as part of the Affordable Care Act, requires public reporting of payments to physicians from pharmaceutical and medical device companies.”
The researchers analyzed information from the Open Payments dataset for 2014 to compare differences in payments from industry sources between pediatricians and other medical specialties, determine variations within pediatric specialties and identify the types of products associated with payments.
Overall, 9.6 million payments were made to physicians, valued at $1.2 billion. Study results showed that pediatricians accounted for a small percentage of the overall amount of payments made to physicians, with 1.7% of payments and 0.9% of the total sum going to general pediatricians. Forty-three percent of active general pediatricians received some type of payment from industry sources in 2014. Parikh and colleagues noted that this proportion was less than the 72% of family medicine doctors and the 58% of internal medicine doctors who received payments.
Results showed that developmental medicine had the greatest percentage of pediatricians who received payments (90%). Furthermore, the most commonly marketed medications associated with payments were ADHD treatments and vaccines.
Parikh and colleagues found that the per-payment medians ranged between $15 and $93 for payments made to pediatric subspecialists. The most common forms of payment were food and beverage, making up 87% of all industry payments.
“To our knowledge, no major national pediatrics society has adopted a formal policy or issued guidance on individual physician industry financial relationships,” Parikh and colleagues wrote. “Given the potential of individual interactions to influence patient care, clinicians could benefit from society policy guidance that extends to these interactions as well.
“Future work should evaluate whether and how industry ties influence patient care because it is reasonable to believe that these payments influence physician prescribing.” – by David Costill
Disclosure: The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.
