Payments by the major pharmaceutical companies to Doctors (and other medical professionals) for ‘consulting’, ‘speaking’, ‘travel’ and ‘gifts’ reached $2.2billion in 2018. Research carried out by ProPublica, an independent news and publishing site, reveals the astonishing sums being paid out in what many believe are just thinly disguised attempts to promote certain drugs to doctors to boost sales.
ProPublica has produced a database ‘Dollars for Docs’ which lists some 600,000 medical professionals who have received such payments. You can go online and type in your doctor’s name to see how much, if anything, he or she received.
ProPublica comments, “There is a perception among many physicians, including some in academia, that drug company payments are fairly benign — a moonlighting gig that educates other doctors about important medications. But since ProPublica began looking at physician payments, one drugmaker after another has paid tens, or even hundreds, of millions of dollars to resolve allegations of improper, or illegal, marketing tactics”.
One Memphis based doctor received almost $29m in 2018, and several Nashville based doctors pulled in excess of $350,000 in the same period.
To find out more go to https://projects.propublica.org/
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