Lilly to reveal doctor payments
pharmafile | September 26, 2008 | News story | Medical Communications, Sales and Marketing |Â Â ethicsÂ
Lilly is to be the first pharmaceutical company to disclose payments made to US doctors for consultancy services and key opinion leader work.
Suspicions that relationships with doctors are tainted by large payments and undue influence continue to dog the industry, despite pharma's protestations that the relations are ethical and appropriate.
Pressure for change is especially strong in the US, where plans are afoot to introduce new laws regulating the field.
Leading congressmen Senator Charles Grassley and Herbert Kohl have put forward legislation called the Physician Payments Sunshine Act, which would oblige companies to declare payments through a central registry.
Now Lilly's chief executive John Lechleiter says it will pre-empt the legislation and voluntarily release details of its payments.
"Lilly is proud of the important and longstanding relationships we have with physicians," he said.
"Many physicians perform valuable services for the biopharmaceutical industry by advising us on the development of new medicines and giving lectures to other medical professionals to educate them about new treatment options.
"For these services, they are compensated at market rates. These services help to advance the science related to medicines and are important to both current and future patients who rely on pharmaceuticals as an integral part of their therapy."
Lilly plans to launch its open-access internet database of payments to physicians as early as the second half of 2009. At launch the database will only list payments made in 2009 to physicians who serve the company as speakers and advisors.
Lilly says that by 2011 it could expand the reporting capabilities of the registry to list payments going back a number of years, as suggested in draft versions of the Sunshine Act. The registry would then be updated every year to reflect the previous year's payment information.
The announcement was welcomed by Senator Kohl, one of the two congressmen who put forward the Sunshine Act legislation.
"Eli Lilly is leading the charge for transparency in the relationship between pharmaceutical companies and doctors by fulfilling the obligations of the Physician Payments Sunshine Act before it has been enacted," Senator Kohl said. "It takes a lot of courage to be the first. They have made a principled decision that I believe will benefit both their business and the consumers of their products."
Lilly's move has also won the support of the American Psychiatric Association (APA). James Scully Jr, chief executive and medical director of the organisation, said: "Our primary focus is the well-being of our patients and APA has adopted strict disclosure policies to ensure our patients are informed regarding relationships between physicians and industry. We applaud efforts by Lilly to ensure there is transparency in their relationships with physicians."
In recent years Lilly has tried to take a lead in efforts to make the pharma industry more transparent. In 2004, it was the first company to voluntarily make public its clinical trials and its clinical trials data (found at www.lillytrials.com) and in 2007 it was the first to publicly report all its educational grants and charitable contributions, posting the data online at www.lillygrantoffice.com.
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