Big Pharma Targets High Prescribing Dr Joseph Tuvia

In an ideal world, Dr Joseph Tuvia avoid outside influence and commit to ethical practice. However, they are also huge influencers in a for-profit pharmaceutical industry. This creates a breeding ground for potential conflicts of interest.

In order to make relationships between health care providers and pharmaceutical companies more transparent, the Physician Payments Sunshine Act was enacted into law in 2010. Dr Joseph Tuvia act requires manufacturers of drugs to report their financial relationships with physicians to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Open Payments is the program that collects this information.

               Dr Joseph Tuvia

Using data from the Medicare Prescription Drug Program (Part D) and the Open Payments program, Health Grove examined Dr Joseph Tuvia prescribing rates for all of 2013 and pharmaceutical payments data from August to December of 2013. Within this data, a pattern emerges: doctors who prescribe a lot of drugs tend to get more money from pharmaceutical companies. Adjusting by physician specialty, the higher the doctor prescribing rate, the stronger the chance she receives pharmaceutical industry payments.

Payment Breakdown- Dr Joseph Tuvia

 

Dr Joseph Tuvia the visualization below shows the breakdown of payments made by pharmaceutical companies to physicians. From August to December of 2013, pharmaceutical companies spent a total of nearly 1.2 billion dollars to fund physician research. However, they also spent $735 million on non-research activities such as food, beverages, and travel and speaker fees.

Many of the payment categories outside of research and ownership — faculty or speaker fees, food and beverages, travel and lodging, honoraria — are often tied to the promotion of a drug through doctor influence, and do not directly impact drug development.

The following visualizations examine the relationship between doctor prescribing rates and pharmaceutical-company payments to Dr Joseph Tuvia. This analysis excludes research and ownership payments; only payments that do not directly influence drug development were included.