DAILY FINANCE: [From article “Is Your Doctor on Big Pharma’s Payroll?”]
“Medical device and pharmaceutical companies are gearing up for a big change in the way they deal with their most important middlemen: doctors. Beginning in 2013, they’ll be required to report every dime they pay out to physicians in speaking fees, consulting, research, meals and business travel to the federal government. You say you didn’t know your doctor was on a pharmaceutical company’s payroll? Neither did I — until this morning, when I searched a new database created by ProPublica, a nonprofit journalism organization, and discovered that one of mine has received money from two drug companies.
Doctors benefiting from relationships with drug or medical device companies is nothing new. Remember all the pens and stuffed animals and other branded tchotchkes that used to be scattered about doctors’ offices? All those trinkets began disappearing a few years ago, after the pharmaceutical industry in 2009 voluntarily agreed to stop producing them, an effort to “try to counter the impression that gifts to doctors are intended to unduly influence medicine,” reports The New York Times…
WATCHDOG: An equally important question is whether your doctor is on the ‘payroll’ of his / her affiliated hospital. Every time your physician suggests a procedure, often to be performed by the doctor or another member of his or her practice, tens of thousands of dollars, sometimes hundreds of thousands, are at stake for the medical profession. It is a good idea to get a second opinion, preferably from outside the Lancaster region.
Listen to advice but take control of your own life.
