Doctors Who Receive Freebies From Drug Companies Tend To Prescribe More Opioids
And the ones who didn't, cut back on their prescription practices. The freebies most often came in the form of meals.
Los Angeles Times:
Did Drug Company Payments To Doctors Help Fuel The Opioid Epidemic?
A new research letter reports that doctors who received free meals and other kinds of payments from pharmaceutical companies tended to prescribe more opioid painkillers to their patients over the course of a year. Meanwhile, doctors who didn’t get such freebies cut back on their opioid prescriptions. (Kaplan, 5/14)
In other news on the crisis —
KPCC:
Is LA County's Lower Opioid Overdose Rate Related To Diversity?
More than 42,000 deaths were attributed to the painkillers in 2016, in both prescription and illegal forms. Los Angeles County has not gone unscathed. But the rate of deadly overdoses here is much lower than the national rate. ...Some experts say the region’s racial and ethnic diversity is likely a factor. (Faust, 5/15)