A report has found that nearly six in 10 doctors in the United States received payments from Big Pharma firms between 2013 and 2022.
This is according to a study done by researchers at Pennsylvania State University, which found that around 57 percent of doctors collectively received approximately $12.1 billion from medical device manufacturers and pharmaceutical drug makers between 2013 and 2022.
“Despite evidence that financial conflicts of interest may influence physician prescribing and may damage patients’ trust in medical professionals, such payments remain pervasive,” the researchers wrote.
The researchers used data from the platform Open Payments – a publicly accessible national database where drug and medical device companies disclose payments and gifts made to physicians – for their study.
They found that from August 2013 to August 2022, American drug and device manufacturers made more than 85 million individual payments to 826,313 of the more than 1.4 million eligible doctors in the United States.
The payments that the researchers included in their study were both in cash and non-cash equivalents. Most went to consulting services and non-consulting fees, such as payments for serving as a speaker.
Delusions of Adequacy 