Impact of Direct to Consumer Pharmaceutical Marketing

描述(申请人提供)：1997年8月，美国食品和药物管理局(FDA)放宽了对处方药产品电视广告的规定，允许药品同时提及疾病和药物品牌名称。此后不久，用于处方药的直接面向消费者广告(DTCA)的支出迅速增加。这在医疗界以及医疗保险公司和管理保健组织中引发了关于这些营销努力的影响的大量辩论。然而，人们对DTCA对处方药有效分配的影响知之甚少。DTCA的效果有三个组成部分：“公益”效应，即传播有关疾病的信息；“匹配”效应，即DTCA中的信息帮助患者和医生确定最佳治疗途径；以及“品牌”效应，即DCTA根据广告的美学或说服性特征，鼓励患者忠于所宣传的品牌。这项研究的主要目的将是估计这三种影响的界限，从而确定DTCA对社会福利的有益和/或有害影响。 我们将通过衡量DTCA如何影响选定疾病被诊断的可能性、医生在疾病被诊断后的处方模式以及护理持续时间(条件是开出处方)来限制福利效应。为此，我们将使用两种典型疾病的数据：骨关节炎和高脂血症。这些数据将来自一个大型的、地理上分散的多诊所电子病历研究网络、电视和广播广告上的地方数据以及其他地方和国家数据来源。所获得的关于DTCA对护理途径的影响的知识将对私人付款人、未来的医疗保险药品福利以及FDA对DTCA营销规则的持续立场具有政策含义。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): In August of 1997, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) relaxed the rules governing television advertising of prescription pharmaceutical products allowing pharmaceuticals to mention both the disease and drug brand name. Shortly thereafter, expenditures on direct to consumer advertising (DTCA) for prescription pharmaceuticals rapidly expanded. This has prompted a great deal of debate in the medical profession and among health care insurers and managed care organizations regarding the effect of these marketing efforts. However, very little is known about the effects of DTCA for the efficient allocation of prescription drugs. There are three components to the effect of DTCA: a "public good" effect whereby the information is disseminated about a disease, a "matching" effect whereby the information in DTCA assists patients and physicians in identifying optimal therapeutic pathways, and a "brand" effect whereby the DCTA encourages patient loyalty to the advertised brand based on the aesthetic or persuasive characteristics of the advertisements. The principal goal of this research will be to estimate bounds on these three effects, and thereby identify the helpful and/or harmful effects of DTCA on social welfare. We will bound the welfare effects by measuring how DTCA affects the likelihood that selected diseases are diagnosed, physician prescribing patterns given that the diseases are diagnosed, and the duration of care, conditional on a prescription being written. To do this, we will use data from two representative diseases: osteoarthritis and hyperlipidemia. The data will be taken from a large, geographically dispersed multi-practice electronic medical record research network, local data on television and radio advertisements, and other sources of local and national data. Knowledge gained about the impact of DTCA on the pathways of care will be have policy implications for private payors, future Medicare pharmaceutical benefits and the continued stance of the FDA on DTCA marketing rules.