Laws in two states requiring disclosure of pharmaceutical company payments to physicians do not provide the public with easy access to payment information and are of limited quality when accessed, according to a study in the March 21 issue of JAMA. Recent legislation in five states and the District of Columbia mandated state disclosure of payments made to physicians by pharmaceutical companies. In two of these states, Vermont and Minnesota, payment disclosures are publicly available. The authors found, however, that 61% of payments to physicians in Vermont were not reported because the pharmaceutical companies “designated them as trade secrets,” and 75% of disclosed payments did not identify the physicians. In Minnesota, only 25% of pharmaceutical companies reported the gifts they made to physicians in each of the three years studied.
The study also found that pharmaceutical companies made substantial numbers of payments of $100 or more to physicians. (The American Medical Association recommends that gifts--but not other payments--to physicians should benefit patients and should not exceed $100 in value.) In Vermont, 2,416 physicians received payments of more than $100, as did 6,238 physicians in Minnesota.
