Pharma pays doctors £40m
pharmafile | April 9, 2013 | News story | Sales and Marketing | ABPI, Bad pharma, ethics
Health professionals received £40 million in payments from pharma companies last year, according to new figures released by the ABPI.
This total figure is not broken down into monies received by individuals, although the number of people who received it is.
While the trade body talks of pharma’s ‘ongoing transparency drive’, critics argue that the industry has had to be dragged kicking and screaming to this point.
Ben Goldacre, author of Bad Pharma, has already ridiculed the move, saying that it will still not be possible to see how much individuals are paid since companies are only publishing aggregate amounts.
Moves are afoot to go further, with the Ethical Standards in Health and Life Sciences Group working on proposals to pick out more specific transactions.
The ABPI says “certain payments made to healthcare professionals at an individual level across Europe” will be declared by 2016 but it calls the publication of aggregate figures “a first, important step on this journey”.
The newly-released £40 million figure is in fact an estimate, put together using information from 35 of the top 44 companies based on UK sales in 2012 and using average spends for similar-sized firms for the rest.
It covers fees given by ABPI member companies to people for services including speaking engagements or sponsorship for training and medical education.
This is by no means the first time that pharma companies have published such details – Pfizer, for example, has made this information available for a couple of years.
The ABPI’s spin on the figures is that pharma’s support for NHS nurses and doctors is vital as public health faces huge pressure on its finances.
“These figures also show another way in which the pharmaceutical industry adds value to the NHS by supporting training and development and medical education,” said chief executive Stephen Whitehead.
“The industry is proud of its collaboration with healthcare professionals,” he went on. “Working closely with healthcare professionals has helped the industry to consult with, and listen to, clinical expertise and develop medicines which are in the best interest of patients.”
Transparency has become the background to virtually every debate involving pharma during the past year or so, with questions over the publication of clinical trial data among the key issues exercising the minds of the industry and its detractors.
Payments are a thorny topic: although the principle of health professionals receiving reimbursement for their services is not seriously in question, there are worries over the potential abuse of such transactions.
A couple of high-profile recent PMCPA cases have seen Roche and ten other pharma firms censured for providing hospitality for doctors which was deemed to be too lavish.
There have also been several incidents of major fraud in the past decade which have thrown the spotlight on the way pharma companies interact with health professionals.
Adam Hill
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