Greetings! Sudhir Polisetty here, back with another dermatology blog. According to a new U.S. study discussed in Reuters, dermatologists tend to prescribe more expensive medications when they give their patients drug samples. Unfortunately, while the samples are intended to be beneficial, this leads to an unnecessary increase in patients’ medical bills.
Dr. Alfred Lane, the study’s senior author, addressed fellow dermatologists about this issue, stating,"You have to realize that these samples are making you write more expensive prescriptions."
In an editorial accompanying the new study in JAMA Dermatology, a statistic shows that in 2011, the drug industry distributed $6.3 billion of samples. Dr. Kenneth Katz, however, noted that Kaiser Permanente Northern California has a strict policy against samples. A similar prohibition has been in place since 2004 at The Stanford University School of Medicine.
In his new study, Dr. Lane and his colleagues compared 2010 prescription data from first-time acne and rosacea patients at Stanford, to a national database of dermatologists from across the U.S. Their findings show that dermatologists in the national database gave about 25 percent of patients samples with their prescriptions, and that nine out of ten drugs prescribed by practices in the database were for the more expensive branded and branded-generic drugs.
Since the drugs prescribed were more expensive, the cost of the treatment per visit was much higher. The study showed that an average of $465 worth of treatments were prescribed each visit compared to an average of $200 per visit at Stanford. Lane was shocked at the findings and never expected it to be twice as much.
Dr. Katz said it is time for dermatologists to get rid of drug samples all together. He hopes that these surprising statistics will encourage all to do the same.
Read more about the study here: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/17/us-dermatology-drug-idUSBREA3G27U20140417
Thanks for reading!
Sudhir Polisetty
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