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Study links physician training, prescription of brand name drugs

Young doctors prescribe more expensive brand name drugs if the physicians training them prefer them over generics.

By Stephen Feller

PHILADELPHIA, July 24 (UPI) -- Doctors are twice as likely to prescribe brand-name drugs when those drugs are preferred by the doctors who are training them, new research shows.

Researchers said that young physicians deferring to the preferences of their bosses during their graduate training is costing patients money they shouldn't need to spend for the same level of care.

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"These findings provide early empirical evidence that low-value practices among physicians are transferred from teachers to trainees, highlighting the importance of re-design of graduate medical education," said Dr. Kira Ryskina, a general internal medicine fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, in a press release. "We observed considerable variation in the prescribing practices of both attending physicians and residents, suggesting room to improve cost-effectiveness."

The researchers analyzed 10,151 statin prescriptions from 342 residents and 42 attending physicians at four hospitals between 2007 and 2011. Residents supervised by attending physicians who prefer brand-name statins opted for them 41.6 percent of the time, versus 22.6 percent of the time when supervised by physicians who mostly prescribe generics.

Brand-name statin prescriptions represent about $5.8 billion in healthcare spending each year, which researchers said could be reduced simply by prescribing generic or lower cost drugs that produce the same results.

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The study is published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

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