Industry Payments to Physicians and Prescriptions of Brand-Name Proton-Pump Inhibitors

Abstract

Objective: To characterize the association between industry payments and prescriptions of 2 brand-name proton-pump inhibitors (PPIs). Study Design: Cross-sectional retrospective. Setting: Physicians nationwide. Subjects and Methods: We identified all physicians receiving industry payments for Dexilant and Nexium 2014-2015 from the Open Payments database. We linked this to records of prescriptions for PPIs paid for by Medicare Part D these same years and compared the proportion of prescriptions written for Dexilant and Nexium in industry-compensated vs nonindustry compensated physicians. The number and dollar amount of payments were associated with the rate of drug prescriptions. Results: We identified 254,452 physicians prescribing PPIs; 8586 and 2766 physicians received industry payments for Dexilant and Nexium, respectively. A total of 5052 of 7876 (64%) physicians compensated for Dexilant prescribed Dexilant vs 39,778 of 246,571 (16%) noncompensated physicians (P