Pharma Leads Publication Of Payment Details To Doctors

Last week the pharmaceutical industry published aggregate totals of last year’s payments in on-going efforts to improve transparency.



Back in 2010 the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) agreed that all companies would publicly release their total payments to healthcare professionals. Last week the ABPI published the information which showed pharma companies are paying an estimated £40 million each year to UK doctors for service fees and travel expenses. The UK Guardian headlined the publication of the data as “total spend on consultancy fees and junkets by 35 suppliers revealed by trade body in move to greater transparency”.

The figures released by ABPI detail payments made by ABPI members for items such as sponsorship for NHS staff to attend medical education events, training and development, and service fees for speaking engagements and participation in advisory boards, among others.

GSK spent £1.9m on fees for advice and consultancy on just over 1,500 UK-based doctors. In addition, they sponsored over 1,000 doctors and other healthcare professionals to attend scientific conferences and meetings, at a total cost of over £887,000. The big pharma company said it had included payments that were made from their overseas offices because of the global expertise needed.

AstraZeneca splits the payments from its UK office and those from its "global teams and international affiliates". The UK office paid more than £670,000 in fees to over 900 doctors plus £30,200 for travel expenses. The global offices paid a total of over £560,000 to just 93 individuals, giving an average of around £6,000. In addition, AstraZeneca did not sponsor any doctors to go to conferences in 2012, which the UK Guardian believes is due the “bad publicity surrounding drug company junkets”.

The ABPI considers that collaborative working between healthcare professionals and industry has long been a “positive driving force for advancements in patient care and progress in modern medicine”. However, the Financial Times notes that the figures continue to fuel the debate over potential conflicts of interests in drug companies influencing prescribing practices, such as “industry critics arguing that some medicines are given more widely than is justified by efficacy and safety data”. 

However, the ABPI argues that transparency is important to ensuring that health professionals and companies can continue to collaborate to bring new, innovative treatments to patients while ensuring that concerns about the relationship between health professionals and industry are addressed. 

Commenting on the publication of the figures, ABPI Chief Executive, Stephen Whitehead said that full transparency about the ways in which healthcare professionals are helping the industry to consult with, and listen to, clinical expertise and develop medicines is “right and appropriate”. He points out that ABPI have taken the lead to make this a reality.

“It is right that professionals are reimbursed fairly for the time and expertise they regularly provide the industry in developing the next generation of medicines. These figures also show another way in which the pharmaceutical industry adds value to the NHS by supporting training and development and medical education”, observes Whitehead.

Currently, the pharma industry is only required to publish information about total spend on doctors. However, by 2016 the European trade body is expecting companies to publish the names of the individual doctors paid.