Evidence map›Paper›PMID 38941087›Full record

ArticleJAMA health forum2024

Quantifying Industry Spending on Promotional Events Using Open Payments Data.

Quinn Grundy, Fabian Held, Meghan MacIsaac, Christine M Baugh, Eric G Campbell, Lisa Bero

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in JAMA health forum, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
1citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

1 citing paper in PubMed.

  1. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

6 authors.

Quinn GrundyLawrence Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Fabian HeldOffice of the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education), University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
Meghan MacIsaacLawrence Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Christine M BaughCenter for Bioethics and Humanities, University of Colorado School of Medicine, Aurora.
Eric G CampbellCenter for Bioethics and Humanities, University of Colorado School of Medicine, Aurora.
Lisa BeroCenter for Bioethics and Humanities, University of Colorado School of Medicine, Aurora.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Importance: Sponsorship of promotional events for health professionals is a key facet of marketing campaigns for pharmaceuticals and medical devices; however, there appears to be limited transparency regarding the scope and scale of this spending. Objective: To develop a novel method for describing the scope and quantifying the spending by US pharmaceutical and medical companies on industry-sponsored promotional events for particular products. Design and Setting: This was a cross-sectional study using records from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid's Open Payments database on payments made to prescribing clinicians from January 1 to December 21, 2022. Main Outcomes and Measures: An event-centric approach was used to define sponsored events as groupings of payment records with matching variables. Events were characterized by value (coffee, lunch, dinner, or banquet) and number of attendees (small vs large). To test the method, the number of and total spending for each type of event across professional groups were calculated and used to identify the top 10 products related to dinner events. To validate the method, we extracted all event details advertised on the websites of 4 state-level nurse practitioner associations that regularly hosted industry-sponsored dinner events during 2022 and compared these with events identified in the Open Payments database. Results: A total of 1 154 806 events sponsored by pharmaceutical and medical device companies were identified for 2022. Of these, 1 151 351 (99.7%) had fewer than 20 attendees, and 922 214 (80.0%) were considered to be a lunch ($10-$30 per person). Seven companies sponsored 16 031 dinners for the top 10 products. Of the 227 sponsored in-person dinner events hosted by the 4 state-level nurse practitioner associations, 168 (74.0%) matched events constructed from the Open Payments dataset. Conclusions and Relevance: These findings indicate that an event-centric analysis of Open Payments data is a valid method to understand the scope and quantify spending by pharmaceutical and medical device companies on industry-sponsored promotional events attended by prescribers. Expanding and enforcing the reporting requirements to cover all payments to all registered health professionals would improve the accuracy of estimates of the true extent of all sponsored events and their impact on clinical practice.

Indexed as

Drug IndustryCenters for Medicare and Medicaid Services, U.S.Conflict of InterestCross-Sectional StudiesHumansMarketingUnited States

Identifiers

PMID38941087
PMCPMC11214116

What OpenQuestion holds

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Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.