New data on payments from pharmaceutical companies to doctors

2024-04-24 08:21:07

The doctor Federico Relimpiowhom I met more than a decade ago, writes in his blog about pharmaceutical industry payments to doctors. And despite the fact that it is a topic that seemed to have improved, it turns out that there is new data coming from one of the leading medical journals, JAMA.

A lot has rained since I wrote my book in 2011. doctors laboratory. Journey inside medicine and the pharmaceutical industry (Peninsula).

Shortly after, Federico wrote a novel titled KOL Opinion Leader. In it he narrates Dr. Sepúlveda’s fight to rescue his integrity from the pharmaceutical industry and the health administration.

Well, as the article published in JAMA begins “despite the evidence that conflicts of interest can influence doctors’ prescribing and damage patients’ trust in medical professionals, such relationships remain widespread«.

Wow, despite the existence of brave doctors Sepúlveda the healthcare corruptiondriven by industries and with the complicity of the administration that looks the other way, continues in force and is general.

The article is based on data from the United States, but it is not difficult to verify that in Spain (and in almost the entire world) the same thing happens. The names change, but not the strategies.

Relimpio explains that these are payments in liquid or in kind that a certain company pharmacist pays a doctor as a consultant, speaker, drinks and food -restaurants-, accommodation and travel, shows, courses, scholarships, charitable donations or other concepts.

The study period was from 2013 to 2022, and the detail of the data is surprising. There is a precise breakdown by Medical specialityby medication or by device used in therapy.

And, as if that were not enough, a study is carried out of the variability, within each medical specialty, of what is paid per specialist, differentiating what is charged by the ordinary doctor and what is charged by the “top 0.1%” (the one per thousand who earns the most in each specialty; «billionaires» of the professionto call them something).

The highest paid specialties in the industry: 1) orthopedic surgeon2) neurologists and psychiatrists, 3) cardiologists, 4) hematologists and oncologists, 5) internal medicine and 6) endocrinologists.

What was received by the top 0.1%: an average member of this elite received – throughout the decade of study – 4.8 million dollars in the case of orthopedic surgeons; 2.5 million for neurologists and psychiatrists; 3 million if the doctor is a cardiologist; another 3 if he is a hematologist or oncologist; barely a million if it is internal medicine, but it goes up to 3.3 million dollars if the doctor in question is an endocrinologist.

Thus, the industry’s payment to American doctors is the responsibility of a handful of VIPs. JAMA does not publish their names, but as Federico says, they are people embarked on the complex – and splendidly paid – world of clinical trialsand the dissemination of its results in various international gatherings.

And if this happens in the USA, in Spain what happens is that the pharmaceutical companies are obliged by their main lobby, Farmindustriato publish on their websites the economic relationship they maintain with doctors (with names and surnames) and with health societies.

To give an example, two months ago I published this post: Bayer’s “transfers of value” that cover up the “purchase” of doctors’ prescriptions: almost 8 million a year

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