Report: Some Middletown MDs Write More Name Brand Rx Than U.S. Average

Connecticut doctors prescribe brand-name drugs to Medicare patients more often than the national average, a use of taxpayer dollars that might stretch further if pharmacies were filling generic scripts, according to a new database by ProPublica detailed in a Middletown Press story.

The nonprofit investigative journalism site's database gathered prescription records from Medicare Part D, which make up a quarter of all prescriptions filled by pharmacies in 2011, according to The Middletown Press.

Generic drugs are important options that allow greater access to health care for all Americans, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. They are copies of brand-name drugs that are the same in dosage form, safety, strength, route of administration, quality, performance characteristics and intended use, the FDA says.

Medicare’s popular prescription-drug program serves 36 million people and pays for one of every four prescriptions written nationwide.

Nearly 77 percent of drugs prescribed in the United States are generic versions of name brand, more expensive prescriptions, according to The Press, and Connecticut prescriptions prescribed generic drugs 72 percent of the time in 2011.

In Middletown, three physicians who sent Medicare patients home with generic drug scripts most of the time were: orthopedist Thomas Larson, at 4 percent, and nurse practitioner Meghan Burgess and physician assistant Janice Desai, at 8 percent. 

Middletown pulmonary, ophthalmology and endocrinology practitioners were among those most likely to prescribe brand name drugs, according to ProPublica. The data does not detail whether drugs prescribed by these physicians have no generic equivalent.

On average, the cost of a generic drug is 80 to 85 percent lower than the brand name product, according to the FDA.

The top 10 Middletown doctors who chose name brand medication over their lesser-priced pharmaceutical equivalents are:

• Raymond Schoonmaker, Pulmonary Disease, 88 percent of the time
• Ophthalmologist Gina Merritt, 77 percent of the time
• Nicole Weinreb, Pulmonary Disease, 68 percent of the time
• Peter Pace, Pulmonary Disease, 62 percent of the time
• Ophthalmologist Roger Luskind, 62 percent of the time
• Endocrinologist Donald Levine, 61 percent of the time
• Endocrinologist Kort Knudson, 57 percent of the time
• Ophthalmologist Elwin Scwartz, 55 percent of the time
• Ophthalmologist Peter Shriver,  54 percent of the time
• Ophthalmologist Rajyalakshmi Mulukutla, 52 percent of the time

Review the entire database ProPublica here.