by Playfuls Staff |
21st March 2007
Laws in some U.S. states requiring disclosure of drug company payments to physicians are not tough enough to fully [more] inform the public, researchers have found.
Mount Sinai School of Medicine researchers analyzed data in Vermont and Minnesota on the interactions between the pharmaceutical industry and health care professionals, which often involve payments of cash, gift certificates, meals, or conference fees.
Recent legislation in five states mandate state disclosure of payments made to physicians by pharmaceutical companies and in Vermont and Minnesota the payment disclosures are publicly available.
Dr. Joseph Ross and colleagues said, "In Vermont, 61 percent of payments were not released to the public because pharmaceutical companies designated them as trade secrets and 75 percent of publicly disclosed payments were missing information necessary to identify the recipient." In Minnesota, the researchers found only about 25 percent of companies reported data.
The authors believe the information obtained through disclosure laws is insufficient for revealing the true pattern of payments.
"Making these payments publicly available will require more stringent laws with clear mechanisms for enforcement," they concluded.
The research appears in the current issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
© 2007 UPI
