Physician-Industry Interactions on Anti –Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor Use

In this issue ofJAMA Ophthalmology, Taylor et al have used the Centers for Medicare& Medicaid Services (CMS) Open Payments program 2013 database, which provides mandatory reporting data from companies on payments they make to physicians, and the CMS 2013 Provider Utilization and Payment Data: Physician and Other Supplier Public Use File in an innovative manner to assess the putative effect on drug use of payments from Genentech and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals to physicians targeted to those companies ’ specific anti–vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) drugs. Specifically, the authors compared physicians’ use of ranibizumab and aflibercept with their use of bevacizumab for intravitreous injections. They found that pharmaceutical industry financial incentives to physicians, obviously g iven to influence prescribing behavior, are strongly correlated with that behavior, namely, prescribing the most expensive anti-VEGF drugs for intravitreous injection when a far less expensive alternative is equally effective. Although the authors were unable to attribute cause and effect to their f indings, it makes sense that cause and effect may well exist.
Source: JAMA Ophthalmology - Category: Opthalmology Source Type: research