“Dollars For Doctors”: Is Your Doctor Being Paid By A Drug Company?
An historic piece of journalism was published today. Six news organizations partnered on the “Dollars for Docs” project — ProPublica, NPR, PBS’s Nightly Business Report, the Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe and Consumer Reports. They examined $258 million in payments by seven drug companies in 2009 and 2010 to about 18,000 healthcare practitioners nationwide for speaking, consulting, and other tasks.
This webpage can be your gateway to the project, with links to a database searchable by doctor’s name or by state, and links to the journalism partners’ efforts:
Boston Globe
“Prescription for Prestige”
The Harvard brand, unrivaled in education, is also prized by the pharmaceutical industry as a powerful tool in promoting drugs. Its allure is evident in a new analysis of all publicly reported industry payments to physicians.
Consumer Reports
“Consumers Wary of Doctors Who Take Drug-Company Dollars”
Most Americans are skeptical of financial relationships between doctors and companies, according to a new, national from the Consumer Reports National Research Center.
Chicago Tribune
“Doctors Draw Payments From Drug Companies”
Follow drug company money in Illinois, and it leads to the psychiatry department at Rush University Medical Center, a prominent headache clinic on the North Side of Chicago, a busy suburban urology practice and a psychiatric hospital accused of overmedicating kids.
PBS
“Nightly Business Report”
A doctor talks about quitting drug company money when their marketing tactics crossed the line.
NPR
“Drug Companies Hire Troubled Docs As Experts”
*This blog post was originally published at Gary Schwitzer's HealthNewsReview Blog*
I long ago decided that most of my colleagues speaking at medical conferences and writing peer review articles where unduly influenced by their pharma relationships. It takes huge editing to get useful medical info that alters my practice decisions in this day and age. Unless of course I want to just provide the medical care and write the prescriptions that the latest/greatest speakers and articles focus on.