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Opinion
''Let public see doctors’ ties to drug companies''
"What is the appropriate relationship between the medical profession and the drug industry? Last month, Dr. Charles Nemeroff stepped down as chair of Emory University’s psychiatry department after a Senate investigation exposed his failure to report hundreds of thousands of dollars in industry consulting and speaking fees, including payments from Glaxo-SmithKline, whose drug he was also studying using taxpayer dollars from the National Institutes of Health.
Last week in this newspaper, Emory economist Paul Rubin defended Nemeroff and accused Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who led the investigation, of leading a “war on pharmaceuticals”....Rubin argues that Nemeroff’s presence on 21 pharmaceutical payrolls is evidence that he is conflict-free, for how could he possibly favor the product of one company over the other 20? It’s a fallacy of the first order."
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Robert Restuccia is executive director of the Prescription Project, a national initiative created with The Pew Charitable Trusts and led by Community Catalyst to ensure safe and effective drugs for consumers.
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"The legislation requiring public disclosure of the financial relationships between healthcare vendors and physicians has been widely discussed in policy circles for years. Critics claimed payments for speaking, consulting, research or even the small trinkets and meals delivered during routine sales calls unduly influenced physician choices and inflated healthcare costs. To combat those effects, Congress required public reporting of those payments in a publicly accessible database. The legislation, labeled the Physician Payment Sunshine Act, was included in the 2010 healthcare reform law."
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Prescription project director Danny Carlat identifies issues with the Physician Payments Sunshine Act requiring further clarification and guidance. Addressing those would ensure that manufacturers can appropriately implement the final rule, and enable consumers to benefit from transparency reports published by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
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The Pew Charitable Trusts is working to decrease the influence of pharmaceutical marketing on doctors’ practices. With a three-year grant from the Attorney General Consumer and Prescriber Education Grant Program, Pew is collaborating several partners to improve conflict-of-interest policies within the 158 medical schools and 400 major teaching hospitals in the United States.
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The Pew Charitable Trusts appreciates this opportunity to submit comments to CMS's "Information Collection Activities" draft guidance. We suggest that both the research and non-research payment templates be modified in order to make it easier for consumers to identify which drugs, devices, biologicals, or medical supplies are associated with particular transfers of value.
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On Feb. 1, 2013, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services published the final rule guiding implementation of the Physician Payments Sunshine Act, which Congress passed as part of the Affordable Care Act in March 2010 to increase transparency in the relationships between physicians and drug and medical device makers. Here are some of the highlights.
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"The Obama administration issued a new rule this month that requires the makers of prescription drugs and other medical products to disclose what they pay doctors for various purposes, like consulting or speaking on behalf of the manufacturer. This overdue rule adds much-needed weight to previous, more limited disclosure requirements."
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Allan Coukell, director of medical programs for The Pew Charitable Trusts, issued the following statement in response to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' final rule for implementing the Physician Payments Sunshine Act, which will bring transparency to the financial relationships between physicians and drug and medical device companies.
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In 2011, the pharmaceutical industry spent nearly $29 billion on drug promotion — more than $25 billion on marketing directly to physicians and almost $4 billion on advertising directly to consumers (mainly through television commercials). This multi-pronged approach is designed to promote its products by influencing doctors’ prescribing practices.
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"Harmonizing conflict-of-interest standards will depend on the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services moving forward to implement the federal Sunshine law, which is now more than a year behind schedule. Industry, consumers and academic stakeholders are all waiting on CMS to issue a final rule."
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During a session at the American Psychiatric Association's annual meeting on conflicts of interest, experts delved into the link between psychiatry and the pharmaceutical industry. While several speakers at the session pointed out that other specialties are similarly entangled with industry, "everyone does it" is generally not a valid defense where conflicts of interest are concerned.
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Dr. Daniel Carlat, Director of the Pew Prescription Project, appeared before the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging to testify about the importance of implementing the Physician Payments Sunshine Act as quickly as possible.
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Pew Prescription Project Director Daniel Carlat opines in the Philadelphia Inquirer: "Monetary relationships among doctors and drug and device companies are not inherently bad; in fact, they are crucial for advancing medical research and patient care. Yet they can also skew prescribing practices and research results. That's why transparency and education are such an elegant solution: They allow these often important relationships to exist, but only on the condition that other professionals and patients are fully informed about them."
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"Every five years, lawmakers, lobbyists, patient groups and agency regulators line up to take their shot at changing how things get done at the Food and Drug Administration."
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The Pew Charitable Trusts “Pew” and Medtronic, Inc. are pleased to jointly comment on the Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services proposed rule implementing Section 6002 of the Affordable Care Act.
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Pew’s main goals in commenting on the proposed rule are to ensure timely implementation and to promote the interest of full transparency by ensuring that data is collected, reported, and published in the most complete, consistent and accurate manner possible.
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