Study: Oncologists who take pharma money are more likely to provide low-value treatments

On­col­o­gists were more like­ly to pro­vide low-val­ue can­cer drugs to their pa­tients af­ter re­ceiv­ing per­son­al pay­ments from phar­ma com­pa­nies than those who did not re­ceive such pay­ments, ac­cord­ing to a study pub­lished Wednes­day in the BMJ.

The re­searchers, led by Aaron Mitchell, an on­col­o­gist at Memo­r­i­al Sloan Ket­ter­ing Can­cer Cen­ter in New York City, iden­ti­fied sev­er­al can­cer treat­ments that were found to not help pa­tients, in­clud­ing prici­er drugs that aren’t bet­ter than al­ter­na­tives, and treat­ments that don’t im­prove out­comes but can cause se­ri­ous side ef­fects. Us­ing CMS’ Open Pay­ments data­base, the team found that on­col­o­gists who had re­ceived per­son­al pay­ments, like free meals and speak­ing or con­sult­ing fees, were more like­ly to pre­scribe those low-val­ue drugs to pa­tients.

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