VICE: Restricting gifts from pharmaceutical reps may influence a doctor’s prescribing habits
New CHIBE research shows that limiting how pharmaceutical sales representatives can market their products to physicians changes their drug prescribing behaviors.
A team, led by George Loewenstein, PhD and Ian Larkin, PhD, examined restrictions 19 academic medical centers (AMCs) in five U.S. states placed on pharmaceutical representatives’ visits to doctors’ offices. Published in the May 2 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, the results reveal that the restrictions caused physicians to switch from prescribing drugs that were more expensive and patent-protected to generic, significantly cheaper drugs.