Healthy Skepticism Library item: 17558

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

Dorschner J
University of Miami database to reveal payments to doctors
The Miami Herald 2010 Apr 1
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/04/01/1557671/university-of-miami-database-to.html

Abstract:

As healthcare reform demands drug makers reveal how much they’re paying doctors, UM announced a website detailing outside business relationships of its doctors.

Full text:

The University of Miami medical school has become one of the first in the country to offer an online, searchable database revealing its doctors’ relationships with outside businesses.
``This is a growing trend,’‘ says Alan Coukell, director of the nonprofit Pew Prescription Project. ``I know of four other schools that are doing this. With the passage of the Sunshine Act, there’s going to be a lot, lot more.’‘
A provision of the new healthcare reform law, the Physician Payments Sunshine section, requires all manufacturers of prescription drugs, medical devices, and supplies must reveal any payment of more than $10 to physicians and teaching hospitals.
Such requirements were pushed by lawmakers after Pew and others exposed relationships between doctors’ prescribing patterns and their oft-hidden relationships with the drug makers.
The sunshine provision starts in 2012, with the federal government required to have a searchable database by Sept. 30, 2013.
PAYMENTS LISTED
As pressures have mounted, Eli Lilly, Merck, GlaxoSmithKline and more recently Pfizer have started websites listing payments to doctors, but the criteria for making the lists vary from company to company and none presently have a threshold as low as $10.
The other schools with faculty listings that Coukell knows about are Stanford, the University of Washington, Northwestern and Minnesota. The last has a strick state law requiring physicians to reveal payments they receive.
The UM website — med.miami.edu/about/opa.asp — is searchable by name of faculty member or by name of company. It will be updated at least annually and now includes data for fiscal 2009 — which ended May 31, 2009. It lists doctors’ relationship with outside companies — but not the dollar amounts of the deals, which will start to be added later this year.
``We’ve taken a strong stand in favor of transparency,’‘ says Richard Bookman, UM’s executive dean for research and training. ``Having something like this is the right thing to do.’‘
Then he added in a telephone interview: ``And, anticipating your question, let me tell you why Nemeroff is not there.’‘
Charles Nemeroff, a psychiatrist and department head at UM, was the subject of a U.S. Senate investigation after allegations surfaced that he received more than $800,000 from GlaxoSmithkline while leading a major, supposedly independent study on drugs, including some made by Glaxo.
Nemeroff’s hiring by UM was announced last November, well after UM’s fiscal 2009 ended, and that is why he is not yet in the database, Bookman said.
Who is in the database, for example, is Bookman himself, who has grants from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and the Sutter Instrument Co.
RECEIVING CASH
Pascal Goldschmidt, dean of the medical school, is shown to receive money from three companies where he serves on the board of directors: Mednax, OPKO Health and Synecor.
A search for GlaxoSmithKline shows that 12 UM doctors receive money for lectures or consulting.