Shai Mulinari
Docent | Universitetslektor
Pharmaceutical company promotional payments to English general practices: : longitudinal study
Författare
Summary, in English
BACKGROUND: General practices have been a long-standing focus of pharmaceutical promotion, but their financial relationships with pharmaceutical companies remain understudied.
AIM: Examine pharmaceutical company payments to general practices in England from 2015-2022, focusing on changing patterns of payments and what this reveals about companies' marketing.
DESIGN & SETTING: Descriptive analysis of pharmaceutical company payments made to practices using data from industry's Disclosure UK database, covering 4430 recipient practices and 54 companies over an eight-year period.
METHOD: Annual Disclosure UK data from 2015-2022 were merged, identifying practices using a novel algorithm-based methodology, and categorising payments by type (eg, donations and grants, event sponsorship). Trends were analysed by company and payment type. The Gini coefficient measured payment concentration, and the persistence of relationships was assessed over time.
RESULTS: Pharmaceutical payments to general practices rose from £2.5 million in 2015 to £7.5 million in 2022. While 54 companies made payments, just one company, Chiesi-marketing commonly prescribed respiratory inhalers-accounted for over 50% of the payment value from 2017 onwards. More than 40% of practices received payments from only one company, and 74% of company-practice relationships lasted just one study year. A few companies dominated, with a Gini coefficient of 0.86, driven by Chiesi's payments.
CONCLUSION: The growing scale and concentration of payments and the dominance of one company raise concerns about bias in general practice. Future research should investigate the impact of payments on clinical decision-making, but to do so, payment disclosures need enhanced transparency, particularly through including product-specific payment details.
Avdelning/ar
- Sociologi
- Birgit Rausing Centrum för Medicinsk Humaniora (BRCMH)
- LUCSUS
Publiceringsår
2025-08-08
Språk
Engelska
Publikation/Tidskrift/Serie
BJGP open
Dokumenttyp
Artikel i tidskrift
Förlag
Royal College of General Practitioners
Ämne
- Sociology (excluding Social Work, Social Anthropology, Demography and Criminology)
- Industrial engineering and management
Aktiv
Epub
Projekt
- Following the money: cross-national study of pharmaceutical industry payments to medical associations and patient organisations
ISBN/ISSN/Övrigt
- ISSN: 2398-3795