Pharma and Physicians Call for UK "Sunshine Act"
Organizations representing both healthcare professionals and pharma have called for a U.K ‘Sunshine Act’ that would mean greater disclosure of financial ties between pharma and physicians.
The Royal College of Physicians, the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) and 16 other organizations collectively known as the Ethical Standards in Health and Life Sciences Group (ESHLSG) have launched a three month consultation period to determine what form that disclosure will take.
Sir Richard Thompson, co-chair of the ESHLSG, explained that the consultation “is intended to establish whether there is, in principle, support for a publically available, single, searchable system for disclosure of payments that is inclusive of all commercial life science organisations working in healthcare”.
Deepak Khanna, President of the ABPI and co-chair of the ESHLSG also stressed that the consultation was aimed less at the details of “practical implementation” than at establishing the “principles” behind such a system, adding that “our view is that the co-creation of a system to declare payments is the right course of action and that it should be developed and agreed jointly by the relevant stakeholder groups”.
As it stands, U.K pharma will begin reporting their total payments to physicians and the number of physicians receiving payments in spring 2013, and the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA) has declared that its members will start the process of disclosure in 2016. Requirements for disclosure are currently under debate in the U.S, the Netherlands, and France, amid an atmosphere of growing concern about the way doctors’ financial ties with pharma may influence prescribing behaviour and academic research.
The ESHLSG claims tha t“healthcare professionals and commercial organisations collaborate and interact in a range of activities from developing innovative treatments, sharing good clinical practice and delivering patient care”, while acknowledging that more transparency is needed in order to build “greater trust between the medical community, industry and patients across the UK and Europe”.
This trust has been damaged by the widespread practice of undisclosed payments to physicians; the Financial Times reports that HM revenue and customs generated £20M in extra taxes from over 1,500 healthcare professionals since it launched a campaign to investigate corporate payments to physicians in 2010. So far one medical practitioner has been criminally convicted and four more criminal investigations are underway as a result of the campaign.
So far, the U.S “Sunshine Act”, the template for all subsequent physician payment disclosure legislation, has been held up in lengthy negotiations ever since being signed into law three years ago and has still not come into effect. The French version of the law has also come under criticism for losing focus, after the latest draft proposed mandatory disclosure only for gifts made to physicians, and not for payments received in return for services such as consultation.