Sunshine and Payments to Doctors from the Pharmaceutical Industry

We have all been accustomed in the past to receiving lecture fees, assistance with travel to conferences and even dinners provided by the pharmaceutical industry. However this type of subsidy of doctors’ activities is decreasing and is going to be far more transparent than hitherto.

Andrew Jack, the pharmaceutical correspondent for the Financial Times, states that in 2010 $437 million was paid to 262,000 doctors in the USA, and $110 million was paid in the first quarter of 2011. President Barack Obama’s health care reforms includes legislation to put “sunshine” on payments to doctors and this disclosure will become compulsory in 2013. Already many of the pharmaceutical companies are publishing details of payments made to physicians in the USA and this information is available from the US based consultancy, PharmaShine.

In the UK and Europe the pressures for disclosure have been more limited, and perhaps it is not such a major problem on this side of the Atlantic but one doubts it!