GSK discloses US healthcare professional payments
pharmafile | December 15, 2009 | News story | Medical Communications |Â Â GSK, doctors, industry reputation, paymentsÂ
GlaxoSmithKline has disclosed some of the fees it has paid to US healthcare professionals for speaking and consulting services.
The list covers the three months from April to June this year and reveals that 3,700 people were given a total of $14.6 million to consult or to speak on behalf of GSK.
“These are professionals who should be fairly compensated for the services and expertise they provide,” said Deirdre Connelly, GSK’s president North America Pharmaceuticals.
“There are strict guidelines about how we work together,” she added.
The publication follows an earlier pledge by the company, which will also make similar declarations for work with European doctors too.
The perennial debate on the relationship between doctors and the pharma industry has become more urgent in the last few years.
Drug companies argue that making use of healthcare professionals’ knowledge and experience will improve patient care.
But scepticism over pharma’s links with the medical profession has dogged the sector, despite industry assurances that ethical standards are being upheld.
In the US, companies have been given a hurry-up on the question of fee disclosure by the introduction of the Physician Payments Sunshine Act.
This law, put forward by leading congressmen Charles Grassley and Herbert Kohl, would oblige the pharma industry to declare payments through a central registry.
No such move is mandatory in Europe, although some observers believe it is only a matter of time.
GSK is to update its list quarterly, posting it in the “Responsibility” section of gsk.com.
GSK is not the first to go down this road: Lilly announced a year ago that it would make public its payments made to US doctors for consultancy and key opinion leader work.
Lilly was also the first company to voluntarily make public its clinical trials and data, and to publicly report all its educational grants and charitable contributions.
The manufacturer has also said that by 2011 it could expand its registry to give retrospective payment details to doctors.
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