It’s about time!
From the New York Times yesterday:
To head off medical conflicts of interest, the Obama administration is poised to require drug companies to disclose the payments they make to doctors for research, consulting, speaking, travel and entertainment.
Many researchers have found evidence that such payments can influence doctors’ treatment decisions and contribute to higher costs by encouraging the use of more expensive drugs and medical devices.
Altmentalities is back making shrewd commentary. You can go see what she had to say about this development.
And some of this information is already available. Have you checked Propublica’s database?
ProPublica has updated it’s database. I’ve posted about it a couple of times. It’s an amazing and useful database in which one can look at payments made to physicians in all 50 states.
At the time I first posted this the database only included seven pharma companies that had disclosed payments. It now includes 12 pharma companies.
A couple of days ago, ProPublica alerted it’s readers to this update.
Does your doctor take payment from pharma?
In all, payments to doctors and other health-care providers in ProPublica’s database total more than $760 million and cover reports from drug companies between 2009 and the second quarter of 2011. (look up your doctor here)
I guess they can get access to even more info now.