(P21) influence of industry payments on prescription behavior pattern of testosterone medications among physicians in the United States: national claim database analysis

Abstract Background To determine the impact of physicians’ financial relationships with the pharmaceutical industry on prescribing marketed Testosterone medications ie, prescription behavior pattern. To determine the impact of physicians’ financial relationships with the pharmaceutical industry on prescribing marketed Testosterone medications ie, prescription behavior pattern. Methods We identified prescribers from the 2021 Medicare Part D Prescribers – by Provider and Drug dataset and the CMS General Open Payment Data Prescriber public use file. This file contains prescriber identifying information (name and practice address) and claim counts for all pharmaceuticals prescribed to beneficiaries with Medicare Part D coverage. We sorted the prescribers based on three categories, (All Providers, “Urologists”, and “Non-Urologists”). We included all prescription drugs labeled “testosterone”. We recorded the total number of prescriptions of “testosterone” drugs for each prescribing provider. We recorded the total number of financial payments each prescriber received for the generic-named “testosterone” drugs. Both the number of payments and the total value of payments were included. Results We identified 387 452 prescribers (273 978 urologists and 113 474 non-urologists) with linked data in the Open Payment Data and Medicare Part D databases. In 2021, 2774 out of 4565 (60.77%) providers who received a payment prescribed testosterone drugs; 15 729 out of 382 887 (4.11%) providers who did not receive a payment prescribed testosterone drugs (p < 0.001). In 2021, 1653 out of 2654 (62.28%) “urologists” who received a payment prescribed testosterone drugs; 6752 out of 271 324 (2.49%) “urologists” who did not receive a payment prescribed testosterone drugs (p < 0.001). In 2021, 1121 out of 1911 (58.66%) “non-urologists” who did receive a payment prescribed testosterone drugs; 8977 out of 111 563 (8.05%) “non-urologists” who did not receive a payment prescribed testosterone drugs (p < 0.001) (Table 1). Conclusion There is a consistent association between receipt of industry payment and prescribing marketed Testosterone medications particularly among urologists providers. This claim database analysis does indicate that prescription behavior pattern for testosterone medications is primarily influenced by industry payments particularly among urologists providers.