Healthy Skepticism Library item: 17932

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: Electronic Source

Erickson N
Sunshine Act requires disclosure of gratuities to doctors
Healthy Living Examiner 2010 Jun 6
http://www.examiner.com/x-24152-Healthy-Living-Examiner~y2010m6d6-Sunshine-Act-requires-disclosure-of-gratuities-to-doctors?

Full text:

For many years, health advocates, medical professionals and the American public have had questions about conflicts of interest in medicine. They want to know which physicians and medical researchers are employed by the pharmaceutical industry and which ones are independent. Soon, they will be able to find out.
Physicians have been exempt from any requirement to disclose who pays them for consulting, speaking engagements, vacations, or wining and dining at five-star restaurants. This exemption will soon come to an end.
Patterned after the Physician Payments Sunshine Act, originally proposed by Senators Herb Kohl (D-WI) and Charles Grassley (R-IA) in 2007, the Sunshine Act is now part of the new health care regulations. Any payment over $100 in a given calendar year must be reported to the Department of Health and Human Services, beginning in 2012. This requirement includes payments made by pharmaceutical companies and medical device manufacturers to doctors and teaching hospitals. The information will then be posted on a website for public viewing. The first report is scheduled to be posted on September 30, 2013, with annual reports each June 30th thereafter.
Now, for the loopholes:
The legislation provides a 4-year, or until the drug is approved whichever comes first, exemption for doctors involved in clinical trials and product development studies. This means if a doctor is being paid by a pharmaceutical company to study a medication not yet approved, you will have to wait four years, or until post approval, to discover the funding source.
The legislation does not cover health advocacy groups who frequently have a substantial influence over how certain medical conditions are treated and frequently receive large donations from pharmaceutical companies and medical device companies.
How is the medical community responding to this new legislation? Consider the following quotes:
Alan Coukell, director of the Pew Prescription Project and a clinical pharmacologist in oncology, says:
We are pleased that Congress has acted on the recommendations of the Institute of Medicine and other respected medical organizations to bring increased transparency to the financial relationships between physicians and the pharmaceutical and medical device industries, which have a vested financial interest in influencing prescribing.
Robert A. Harrington, MD, professor of medicine and director of the Duke Clinical Research Institute, says:
I fully favor collaborative relationships between academics and industry in research and education. But since the interests of each group are by necessity different, there needs to be rules for appropriate engagement. Full disclosure of the financial relationships between the groups allows interested parties to understand any real or perceived biases.
Jerome Kassiere, MD, and professor at Tufts University School of Medicine, says:
The public will be able to go online and determine which of their doctors have been in the employ of industries, and thus which doctors’ opinions they might question.
Dr. Thomas Stossel, American Cancer Society, and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, says:
The failure of physicians and academics who partner successfully with industry to articulate opposition to the allegations (of conflicts of interest) has enabled a perfect storm of the activists, ambitious politicians, sensation-seeking media and politically corect health administrators to inflict onerous regulations limiting freedom of speech, association, and reward. While benign at face value, the call for ‘transparency’ is the driver underlying regulation. The emerging confessional apparatus will incure confusion and costs and will impair physician and researcher collaboration.
One would hope the loopholes mentioned above be closed, but this legislation appears to be a step in the right direction. Physicians who are being paid for an honest days work have nothing to fear. Physicians who are being paid to promote questionable opinions without sound scientific data to back them up — that’s another story!