US doctors enjoying industry-sponsored meals more likely to prescribe branded meds; study

“Receipt of industry-sponsored meals was associated with an increased rate of prescribing the brand-name medication that was being promoted.”

That is the stated conclusion of a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) entitled Pharmaceutical Industry–Sponsored Meals and Physician Prescribing Patterns for Medicare Beneficiaries.

The aim of the research was to examine the association between US physicians’ receipt of industry-sponsored meals, which account for roughly 80% of the total number of industry payments, and rates of prescribing the promoted drug to Medicare beneficiaries.