Objective To estimate the association between oncologists’ receipt of payments from the pharmaceutical industry and delivery of non-recommended or low value interventions among their patients.
Design Cohort study.
Setting Fee-for-service Medicare claims.
Participants Medicare beneficiaries with a diagnosis of incident cancer (new occurrence of a cancer diagnosis code in proximity to claims for cancer treatment, and no such diagnosis codes during a ≥1 year washout period) during 2014-19, who met additional requirements identifying them as at risk for one of four non-recommended or low value interventions: denosumab for castration sensitive prostate cancer, granulocyte colony stimulating factors (GCSF) for patients at low risk for neutropenic fever, nab-paclitaxel for cancers with no evidence of superiority over paclitaxel, and a branded drug in settings where a generic or biosimilar version was available.
Main outcome measures Receipt of the non-recommended or low value drug for