In December, the Generics and Biosimilar Initiative (GaBI) published a whitepaper entitled “US prescribers’ attitudes and perceptions about biosimilars”, based on the findings from ASBM’s survey of 401 U.S. physicians fielded in late 2021. The paper was authored by ASBM’s Chairman Ralph McKibbin, MD, FACP, FACG, AGAF; and Executive Director Michael S. Reilly, Esq. The survey examines physician attitudes toward a wide variety of biosimilar policy issues including approval standards, non-medical switching, interchangeability, and reimbursement practices. While U.S. physicians were highly confident in the safety and efficacy of biosimilars, the survey revealed that maintaining control over treatment choices- including the ability to prevent substitution by a third party- was extremely important to the respondents. From the abstract:

Most physicians are comfortable prescribing biosimilars and comfortable switching stable patients to biosimilar product. Over half of physicians are more likely to prescribe biosimilars with interchangeable status and they are comfortable with pharmacy level substitution of these products. However, the majority want to keep the authority to prevent pharmacy level substitution if they specify so. When it came to switching patients to a biosimilar for non-medical reasons, the majority were comfortable doing this but fewer than half were comfortable with third party switching. In addition, most physicians favored a scenario where multiple products, including innovator and biosimilars are reimbursed, and biosimilars may be encouraged for new patients with no automatic substitution permitted.
The paper was published in GaBI Journal, Volume 11, Year 2022, Issue 3.

Read the full paper online here.