Physicians have long been receiving payments from drug and device manufacturers all over the country. If anything, these transactions cover anything and everything from meals to royalties and even speaking fees. To put it in simple words, this is a billion-dollar relationship that the public finally got to take a look at thanks to the Open Payments program.
If anything, people are critical of the publicly available data with the claim that it lacks context and doesn’t, in any way, explain why large sums were paid to doctors by companies. This, as per critics, tends to make even legitimate payments appear questionable and, hence, triggers doubts over the transactions that take place and collaborations between physicians and the industry – and this is why the media is all set to bring
An analysis conducted by Bloomberg BNA over the 2015 spend data reported by the industry suggested that there are two specialties that literally dominate the field, and physicians practicing them receive the highest payments from drug and device manufacturing companies.
The two specialties that stand out are internal medicine and orthopedics. For the 2015 reporting period, payments made to internal medicine physicians totaled a full $598 million, whereas orthopedic surgeons were paid $409 million by device companies.
For the record, a distant third was achieved by psychiatrists and neurologists, as their combined payments were $141 million. Regarding manufacturers, orthopedic surgeons received %291 million in royalties in 2015, followed by $58.7 million in consulting fees and $16.6 million for lodging.
To break down the payments even further, orthopedic surgeons did particularly well in terms of the payments that they received. The highest-paid orthopedic surgeon was Roger Jackson from Kansas City, and received $38 million in the year 2015.
He was followed by Stephen Burkhart from San Antonio, Texas, who received $19 million in royalty and license payments. While the public can acquire information about how much was paid to doctors and why, the data raises several questions.
For instance, what was the nature of the consulting that was provided by physicians in lieu of the payments, and why were physicians paid for lodging purposes?
Determination of reason behind financial relationships
The fact of the matter is that physicians are held to a high standard, which makes it all the more important to ensure that their financial relationships do not create a conflict of interest – these transactions need to be deemed appropriate to ensure that the highest quality of care is being provided to patients.
As a next step, it is vital to consider whether a payment received by a manufacturer impacts physician decision-making and treatment prescription. If anything, there isn’t much that can be done at the moment to figure out whether such financial relationships are harmful in any way whatsoever.
The media is quick to claim that a mere meal is all it takes to impact a physician’s prescription – not only is the ambiguity behind spend data responsible for this claim, but a number of research studies have suggested the same. All in all, there are countless positive consequences of the relationships that exist between physicians and the industry, and it is because of this that these relationships need to be interpreted properly.
