Recently Diagnosed or Relapsed? Stop Looking For a Miracle Cure, and Use Evidence-Based Therapies To Enhance Your Treatment and Prolong Your Remission
Multiple Myeloma an incurable disease, but I have spent the last 25 years in remission using a blend of conventional oncology and evidence-based nutrition, supplementation, and lifestyle therapies from peer-reviewed studies that your oncologist probably hasn't told you about.
Click the orange button to the right to learn more about what you can start doing today.
- You are here:
- Home »
- Blog »
- Multiple Myeloma »
- Direct-to-Oncologist Marketing?
Direct-to-Oncologist Marketing?
If you are a newly diagnosed myeloma (NDMM) patient, how do you feel about direct-to-oncologist marketing? How would you feel about your onc. prescribing a chemo regimen immediately following him/her receiving payment from a drug company?
According to the article linked below, oncologists prescribing habits respond immediately but evidence show that the newer drugs do NOT result in longer life of the cancer patient.
Further, as most MM patients know, many of the chemotherapy regimens used for MM therapy are incredibly expensive. So even if the patient pays only, say, 20% of the cost of a regimen, it can be exorbitant.
Is your oncologist swayed by money? Do you care?
When I asked ChatGPT the question “Are big pharma payments to oncologists a conflict of interest on the part of oncology?” here is what it said.
Yes, big pharma payments to oncologists can present a potential conflict of interest. When pharmaceutical companies provide financial incentives—such as consulting fees, research funding, or speaking honoraria—to oncologists, it raises concerns about whether these payments could influence prescribing behavior, treatment recommendations, or clinical trial decisions.
Potential Conflicts of Interest
- Treatment Decisions – Oncologists might be more inclined to prescribe drugs from companies that provide them with financial incentives, even if other treatments are equally or more effective.
- Clinical Trial Bias – Pharmaceutical funding of clinical trials might lead to biased study designs, selective reporting of results, or undue promotion of a particular drug.
- Increased Costs for Patients – If oncologists favor expensive brand-name drugs over generics due to industry relationships, this can drive up healthcare costs.
- Erosion of Patient Trust – Patients may feel unsure whether their treatment is based purely on medical necessity or influenced by financial relationships.
Regulation & Transparency
To mitigate conflicts of interest, various policies and laws have been implemented:
- The Physician Payments Sunshine Act (U.S.) requires disclosure of payments from drug and medical device companies to doctors.
- Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) and professional organizations have ethical guidelines on managing financial conflicts of interest.
- Independent Continuing Medical Education (CME) programs aim to reduce industry influence on physician education.
While pharma funding can support valuable research and innovation, transparency and strict oversight are necessary to ensure that patient care remains the top priority. Would you like insights on specific cases or policies related to this issue?
I am a long-term MM survivor. I have no solution to offer MM patients facing the problem of financial incentives given to oncologists. All I can say is to learn as much as you can about MM in an effort to understand what your oncologist is prescribing and why.
There is no question in my mind that MM specialists are central to your MM management. I do, however, believe that knowledge is power.
Email me at David.PeopleBeatingCancer@gmail.com with your thinking about direct to oncologist marketing in myeloma. I’m curious to hear what you think.
thank you,
David Emerson
- MM Survivor
- MM Cancer Coach
- Director PeopleBeatingCancer
Nothing for something: Marketing cancer drugs to physicians increases prescribing without improving mortality☆
Highlights
- Marketing encounters between physicians and drug firms raise cancer drug prescribing.
- After a payment, physicians expand treatment to patients with lower predicted mortality.
- However, payments do not improve short-run mortality among Medicare cancer patients.
Abstract
Physicians commonly receive marketing-related transfers from drug firms. We examine the impact of these relationships on the prescribing of physician-administered cancer drugs in Medicare. We find that prescribing of the associated drug increases 4% in the twelve months after a payment is received, with the increase beginning sharply in the month of payment and fading out within a year. A marketing payment also leads physicians to begin treating cancer patients with lower predicted mortality. While payments result in greater expenditure on cancer drugs, there are no associated improvements in patient mortality…
Using our novel linkage of Open Payments to cancer prescribing records, we find that physicians prescribing cancer drugs have frequent marketing encounters, with 67% of our sample of cancer-treating physicians receiving at least one cancer-drug marketing payment between 2014 and 2018. Major drugs such as Opdivo and Keytruda reach more than half of prescribers with marketing payments…
Direct-to-physician marketing
Pharmaceutical firms focus most of their marketing expenditures on physicians, due to physicians’ key role in deciding whether to prescribe a drug and choosing among competitors. In 2012, pharmaceutical firms directed $23 billion in marketing expenditures towards physicians, in the form of detailing, samples, or sponsorship of educational meetings (Pew Charitable Trusts, 2013). These marketing activities have long been viewed with suspicion as “bribery from the drug companies” (PBS Frontline,
Conclusion
In this paper, we examined how marketing-related payments affect cancer prescribing and mortality in Medicare. We find that after a payment, physicians increase cancer drug expenditure, specifically on the marketed drug. However, these increased expenditures result in no detectable decrease in mortality among these patients, and our results are precise enough to rule out decreases beyond 4.2%.
direct-to-oncologist marketing direct-to-oncologist marketing