Drug Companies, Medical Device Makers To Disclose Payments to Physicians, Medical Education Grants

More than a dozen of the largest U.S. pharmaceutical and medical device companies have decided to disclose information about continuing medical education grants that they award to physicians, the AP/San Francisco Chronicle reports.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) recently sent letters to 15 companies to request information on CME grants amid concerns of potential abuse. Under federal law, pharmaceutical and medical device companies cannot use CME grants to promote their medications. In the letters, Grassley wrote, "If your company does not yet have any efforts or plans in place" to disclose the information, as Eli Lilly does currently, "please explain why not."

According to the AP/Chronicle, the responses from the companies were "wide-ranging but mostly what the senator wanted to hear," as most companies said that they plan to disclose the information on their Web sites. Some companies also said that they plan to disclose third-party payments, payments to patient advocacy groups and certain payments to physicians. However, Schering-Plough said, "We do not publish or have plans at the moment to publish a list of charitable contributions or educational grants that medical organizations have received from us."

Grassley said, "The way these companies are making information about financial relationships open to scrutiny is the right thing to do." However, consumer advocacy groups said that the companies decided to disclose the information only to "head off legislation that would require public disclosure of their giving," the AP/Chronicle reports. Peter Lurie of Public Citizen said, "If they were doing this out of the goodness of their heart, they would have done so decades ago" (Freking, AP/San Francisco Chronicle, 4/11).

The AP/Boston Globe on Friday published a summary of the responses from the companies (AP/Boston Globe, 4/11).