Biosimilars Newsfeed
Nearly Half of U.S. Physicians Say They Will Prescribe More Biosimilars, According to New Data From InCrowd
Marketwired (03/03/16)
A new survey from InCrowd suggests that U.S. physicians are ready to adopt biosimilars as a potentially important way to lower their patients' drug costs. The survey found that physicians ranked efficacy and safety above patient costs among the top key factors in determining whether health care professionals would prescribe biosimilars. Nearly 50 percent of doctors in five major specialty areas said they expected to prescribe more biosimilars in the next three years, as availability of the drugs increases. However, about 25 percent of the doctors surveyed said that payers and insurance firms ultimately will determine their level of biosimilar prescribing, and 17 percent said biosimilars would become the norm or replace reference biologics in the next three years. Questions about pharmacy-level substitutions had mixed results. Only two out of 10 respondents said they were likely to strictly prohibit pharmacy-level substitution of the originator biologic with biosimilars, while three out of 10 said they would never prohibit substitutions and four in 10 said they would treat substitutions on a case-by-case basis. The physicians also said they expect to prescribe biosimilars to a greater proportion of their treatment-naïve patients than to patients currently or previously treated with the originator biologics.
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