Healthy Skepticism Library item: 14977

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

Goldstein J.
Coming Soon: yourdoctorsfinancialties.com
The Wall Street Journal Blog 2009 Jan 22
http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2009/01/22/coming-soon-yourdoctorsfinancialtiescom/#more-4643

Full text:

Some new information recently showed up on the Cleveland Clinic’s online profiles of its doctors.

Down there below “Awards & Honors” and “Professional Memberships,” a section called “Industry Relationships” lists companies that have paid the doc speaking and consulting of $5,000 or more per year, and “any equity, royalties, and fiduciary relationships” in companies the doc works with.

It sounds straightforward enough. But, as a perspective piece in this week’s New England Journal of Medicine points out, it’s part of a big shift that embraces Congress, the medical profession and the drug and device industries.

A bunch of companies, including Eli Lilly, Merck and GlaxoSmithKline, have all said they’ll start disclosing their payments to doctors. A few states require reporting of this sort of thing, and the Physician Payment Sunshine Act that’s been rattling around Congress for a while now would create national reporting rules.

It’s worth noting that the Cleveland Clinic doesn’t list exactly how much their docs are paid, just whether the payments exceed the $5,000 threshold. Of course, some docs get way, way more than that – like the academic doc we wrote about earlier this month who got $19 million over five years from Medtronic, while reporting to his university that he was paid “$20,000 or more” during most of that time.

The NEJM piece mentions that the University of Pennsylvania’s med school has promised to start online reporting, and points to voluntary postings by faculty at the Duke Clinical Research Institute.

Still, given the fact that industry’s getting on board and action could be coming from Congress, it’s a bit surprising that we haven’t heard more from high-profile academic medical centers getting out in front and posting their docs’ financial ties online.