Absolutely. Likely it's bidirectional - pharma identifies high prescribers (or recognized experts) and invite them to speak at conferences or dinner meetings. T

Absolutely. Likely it's bidirectional - pharma identifies high prescribers (or recognized experts) and invite them to speak at conferences or dinner meetings. This increases their affinity for the product, and presumably their prescribing. Lather, rinse, repeat. One /could/ sort out causation a bit more by looking at lagged data (does prior-year payment influence subsequent year prescribing, eg) - but it was such a colossal pain to match in the first place that we never went back to look. Of note: pharmacies sell docs' prescribing history to aggregators who sell it to pharma, in fully identified form. So, pharma sales folk know exactly how much of everything docs write.