Pharmaceutical Industry–Sponsored Meals and Physician Prescribing Patterns for Medicare Beneficiaries

Importance

The association between industry payments to physicians and prescribing rates of the brand-name medications that are being promoted is controversial. In the United States, industry payment data and Medicare prescribing records recently became publicly available.

Objective

To study the association between physicians’ receipt of industry-sponsored meals, which account for roughly 80% of the total number of industry...