Healthy Skepticism Library item: 18371

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

Silverman E
Johnson & Johnson Discloses Fees Paid To Doctors
Pharmalot 2010 July 9
http://www.pharmalot.com/2010/07/johnson-johnson-discloses-fees-paid-to-doctors/

Full text:

The healthcare giant joins a growing list of drugmakers that are disclosing info about their financial ties to physicians. The move comes after passage of the health care reform bill, which includes a provision known as Physician Payments Sunshine that requires drugmakers each year to record – starting 2012 – all gifts and payments to docs and teaching hospitals. Posting begins in 2013.
The J&J list, however, offers both good news and bad news. The good news? J&J is disclosing payments. The bad news? Since J&J runs what are effectively different operating units, there are separate lists for separate units – which makes it difficult to get the bigger picture. The J&J units that have posted their first quarterly reports are Ortho-McNeil-Janssen, Centocor Ortho Biotech and Tibotec.
Why is there no aggregate disclosure? Because each link represents and individual legal entity, a J&J spokesman tells The Wall Street Journal. Consequently, anyone wishing to compile what J&J has paid docs will have to create their own spreadsheet. And unlike the Pfizer site, for instance, there is no info on money paid for meals, non-educational items or research (back story).
“The other way in which the J&J disclosures are not aggregated is that each payment is reported separately, so a patient would have to manually total each individual payment to know how much a physician had received, even from a single operating unit.” says Allan Coukell, director of the Pew Prescription Project, which worked for Sunshine provision. And “J&J is reporting payments greater than $25, for any individual who receives an aggregate of more than $250. The Sunshine threshold is $10.”
A larger problem? The drugmakers that do post disclosures – GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, Lilly, Merck and Cephalon – do not all use the same format. This is another impediment to gaining a top-down view, which is why a uniform approach has been pushed (see background here). What do you get from J&J? The reports tally each payment for speaking, consulting and, in a very few cases, post-marketing safety surveillance. Take a look and you’ll see numerous docs received several thousand dollars each during this year’s first quarter.