Pharma Payments And Gifts Influence Doctors' Prescribing Practices, Review Concludes

TUESDAY, Oct. 13, 2026 (HealthDay News) — Pharma companies are influencing doctors to prescribe pricey drugs by wooing them with money and gifts, a new evidence review has concluded.

Payments and gifts from the pharmaceutical industry also increase the quantity of drugs doctors prescribe, the Cochrane Library review found.

Doctors also are more likely to prescribe drugs inappropriately if they’ve received money or gifts from a pharma company, researchers said.

“When physicians accept payments or free meals from the pharmaceutical industry we can see evidence in the data that physicians prescribe more of the promoted drug,” researcher Quinn Grundy, an associate professor of nursing at the University of Toronto in Canada, said in a news release.

“This practice can increase the overall costs to our health system, and to patients through higher co-pays and out-of-pocket costs, when they are prescribed a brand name drug even though cost-effective alternatives exist,” Grundy said.

For the review, researchers pooled data from more than 93 studies tracking doctors who’d been targeted by pharmaceutical companies for sales rep visits, payments for consulting or serving on advisory boards, free meals, drug sample handouts or other marketing ploys used to promote medications.

The practice is common around the world, but not all doctors play along, researchers said.

“In the U.S., where companies are required to report payments made to physicians in a public database, just over half of all licensed physicians have accepted a payment, including free meals from a pharmaceutical company,” Grundy said.

“This is important because it shows that companies are focusing their marketing resources on physicians who will deliver the highest return on investment, and prescribe more of their promoted drug, but it also shows that there are a large number of physicians who are choosing not to interact with pharmaceutical companies and remain independent of these influences,” Grundy continued.

These sales tactics do affect doctors, who become more likely to prescribe drugs promoted by companies that shower them with money or gifts, according to data from 39 prior studies involving 3.8 million doctors, results show.

Doctors also were more likely to prescribe drugs inappropriately, choosing meds that patients either didn’t necessarily need or might actually do them harm, according to data from 10 studies involving 2.9 million doctors.

Evidence also showed that policies which prohibit conflicts of interest or limit doctors’ on-the-job interactions with pharma companies tended to blunt the sales tactics.

“These studies show that we can create practice environments that promote and preserve independence and that this is best achieved collectively, within health systems and institutions, rather than leaving it up to individual clinicians,” Grundy said.

People in the United States can find out whether their doctor has received any payments or gifts from pharma companies by searching an online database maintained by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

The review appears in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews.

More information

Yale School of Medicine has more on financial conflicts of interest and prescribing practices.

SOURCES: University of Toronto, news release, Oct. 9, 2026; Cochrane Library, Oct. 9, 2026