Health forum says doctors will still not be deterred from accepting money which could influence their prescribing habits
Updated drug company transparency guidelines will not deter doctors from accepting thousands of dollars which potentially influence their prescribing habits, the peak body representing healthcare consumers says.
The Consumers Health Forum chief executive, Adam Stankevicius, said pharmaceutical code of conduct reforms proposed by the industry body Medicines Australia did not go far enough to give consumers confidence in the drugs they were prescribed.
The guidelines will for the first time force pharmaceutical companies to disclose how much they spend on individual doctors, but those doctors can choose to remain anonymous.
The expenditure on the unidentified doctors would instead be reported as a total figure alongside the number of doctors it relates to. Consumers going online to find payments made to individual doctors would be able to find only those who had consented to the information being made public.
“As a result, senior medical experts will still be able to receive tens of thousands of dollars in speakers’ fees, sponsored travel and other perks from a drug company in return for giving talks about that company’s product, without these individual practitioner payments being disclosed,” Stankevicius said.
“Such undisclosed perks and remuneration undermine the independence of medical practitioners and the confidence of consumers in relation to medicines prescribing.”
Patients should know if doctors were receiving perks from the companies that made the drugs their doctors prescribed to them, he said. “The code should require that practitioners forgo or repay payments from drug companies if they are not prepared to be named as recipients.
“One can reasonably question why the pharmaceutical industry would shell out millions of dollars a year to Australia’s medical practitioners, if they aren’t expecting some return on that investment.”
But Medicines Australia chief executive Dr Brendan Shaw said the guidelines reflected best practice and had been developed on the advice of the Australian privacy commissioner.
“[He] confirmed that it is best practice for a healthcare professional to be asked for their consent before personal information relating to payments and transfers of value from pharmaceutical companies is published,” Shaw said.
“Other legal experts have suggested that companies must obtain permission from doctors as a result of commonwealth privacy legislation. We want to work with the professions and medical groups to encourage healthcare professionals to provide consent.”
He said relations between pharmaceutical companies and healthcare professionals were appropriate and valuable, and that doctors should have no reason to want to hide that information.
“The pharmaceutical industry and healthcare professional organisations already each promote ethical collaboration, through self-regulatory codes of practice and guidelines,” he said. “It is important that both the industry and healthcare professionals can show that these relationships are appropriate and ethical.”
The reforms would also allow up to $120 to be spent on a meal and beverages for individual doctors at events. “This maximum would only be appropriate in exceptional circumstances, such as a dinner at a learned society conference with substantial educational content,” the guidelines say.
The transparency reforms have been submitted to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission for authorisation, a process which takes up to six months.
If authorised they will take effect early next year and apply to all Medicines Australia members, who supply almost 90% of medicines available to patients.