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Members of Innovative Medicines Canada (IMC), the lobbying arm of major pharmaceutical companies, recently released their voluntary payments reports to health professionals and health care organizations.
In total, the 10 reporting companies paid more than $ 75 million in 2017.
This is the second year of these disclosures. When they started, Russell Williams, then president of the IMC, told CBC The Current : "We are ready to continually improve and monitor" the revelations. According to the new president, Pamela Fralick, the revelations of 2016 were only a first step and she was expecting more companies to disclose their payments in 2017.
2017 disclosures arrive, and there are always the same 10 companies. Moreover, the disclosures are not actually on the IMC website, they are on the websites of individual companies and are not easy to find. It takes at least a few mouse clicks to locate the material. There are no more details this year than last year on how money is used.
IMC calls these revelations "part of our commitment to high ethical standards and building trust."
are rough numbers – with no information on what they've paid.
Paid to promote opioids?
Why did Purdue Pharma, maker of OxyContin and a host of other opioid products, give nearly $ 1.9 million to health professionals in 2017?
Purdue's entire website indicates that the money was for "services". Have any of these services been delivered by doctors on behalf of Purdue? In the past, Purdue paid doctors $ 2,000 per conference.
(Photo AP / Toby Talbot, record)
Amgen Canada donated more than $ 6 million to health care, but we do not know what these organizations did with this money.
Novartis spent $ 350,000 on travel expenses so that doctors and possibly other professionals could attend international conferences and / or autonomous world meetings.
Who were these health professionals? What meetings did they go to? Where did the meetings take place?
Canada lags behind
Large pharmaceutical companies in Canada are far behind the curve when it comes to revealing where the money is going. The federal government does not seem in a hurry to force companies to make more public information either.
A little over a year ago, the Minister of Health, Jane Philpott, was of the opinion that forcing the disclosure of payments to individual physicians was "in principle … an important concept. But should be left to the provinces. , companies have had to disclose any payment of more than $ 10 to a doctor since 2013. The doctors are appointed.
In Australia, an badysis of the information that companies must disclose revealed that, from October 2011 to September 2015, 42 companies sponsored 116,845 events for health professionals.
In nine European countries, disclosure is mandatory or voluntary. Many European voluntary codes allow doctors not to disclose their names.
IMC justifies not linking the names of physicians to payments under Canada's privacy laws, but the law recently pbaded by Ontario will require all health care professionals who receive Money or any other "transfer of value" 19659002] Later this summer, British Columbia will hold public consultations on the same type of legislation
Free Lunches Increase Prescriptions
Disclosure No. is that the first step. Payments made to physicians can be related to the way they prescribe.
In the United States, this was badyzed using the Medicare database. The links show an badociation between the amount of money that doctors receive and their prescription branded statins (cholesterol-lowering drugs) rather than much cheaper generic versions.
Receiving industry sponsored meals valued at less than $ 20 is badociated with an increase in the prescription rate of brand name drugs being promoted.
Receiving money from opioid manufacturers in one year is badociated with the prescription of more opioids the following year
It may be why IMC does not want to make more disclosures. This pressure group is afraid that Canadians will realize the adverse effects of all payments made by member companies.
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