Is your doctor getting money from the drug companies?

[agate]

There is a database that will tell you if your doctor has received drug company money from August 2013 to December 2014, and how much.

Only registered and activated users can see links., Click Here To Register...

I entered the names of several neuros. The amounts varied from $11 to $25,000. "My" neuro, the one I may be losing, took only about $2,000--which is really minimal, considering that most neuros are probably receiving some money from drug companies.

The Website states:

The database includes “general payments” – 15 categories including promotional speaking, consulting, meals, travel and royalties. It does not include research payments nor does it include physicians’ ownership stakes in companies.

[SalpalSally]

I believe that most Doc's are getting a few kickbacks, yes. Why not, he/she says!

[agate]

I believe that most Doc's are getting a few kickbacks, yes. Why not, he/she says!

The amounts received can be eye-opening. One doctor who is very well known in this area in the MS field received $202,000, for instance. That's not small change over less than a year and a half.

I've thought a long time before posting the link. I first saw it some time ago but didn't know whether I wanted to post it. I'm not bashing doctors. Just saying that we are consumers when it comes to our own medical care and we owe it to ourselves to keep an eye on the people treating us to make sure that we're getting the care that will benefit us--and not the drug companies or the doctors.

[Virginia]

Well, my Doctor got $3.798. He is in with the largest Neurology practice in this area. He also kind of is in charge of Tysabri infusions. In addition to his regular patients he is physically close by where they give the infusions and so is on call if anything goes wrong.

[Virginia]

A closer look shows that this $3,798 was received between August, 2013 and December 2014. He received funds from 22 different companies and they were all small. I expect most all of these were lunches. In this area when Doctors advertise for Nurses they often advertise free lunches as part of the benefits. They are furnished by the drug companies. So given the small amounts that he received each time I think it is lunches. There were no large amounts.

[agate]

A few thousand--that's nothing much, really, over nearly a year and a half. The ones that bother me are those who are getting hundreds of thousands.

You have to wonder if such a doctor is going to care very much about the patients. Maybe just managing his funds keeps him entirely too busy.Or getting research grants and overseeing them.

[SalpalSally]

Whatever happened to the Hippocratic oath?

[Gary]

Maybe this should be a sticky?

Our local surgeon (and my neighbor) got $27.38 and his wife (anesthesiologist) got $13.00 according to my kids lunch is a pretty common thing. Even a handful of pens and refrigerator magnets counts. Since I prepare both of their taxes I already know what they get lol. Missy took nothing and Steven got $3.55 I guess Purdue had some really nice gel-pens and he couldn't resist them.

[Catdancer]

Mine got $184. Some of that was for primatrix, one of the treatments he tried on me....without success. $40 was for a luncheon....where he learned about primatrix. I'm not too worried...

[Catdancer]

Whatever happened to the Hippocratic oath?

First do no harm. The fact that any doctors accepted any amounts of cash does not necessarily assume they've done harm to anyone. A doctor I know collects all the free samples of various meds offered to him.....and passes them along (appropriately) to the patients in the fort clinic he also serves. The samples are considered "gifts" and assigned a monetary value. It looks like he receives thousands in cash....which he does. .but which are of no direct benefit to him.

[Catdancer]

Just checked n all our doctors,and dentist. None got more than $200, most of that for food/beverages.

[agate]

Mine checked out well too. It's comforting to know.

Medical providers must have to be able to say No often to the drug companies, which seem to be very aggressive.

[Gary]

We have rules in our area that prohibit the Docs from taking drug samples from the reps. According to my kids you can loose your job/privileges if you get caught doing it. Over the years it saved my quite a bit of $$ mostly antibiotics especially the liquid ones when the kids were little. And the docs office would give us a call when their supply of insulin would near expiration as they would have to destroy it and since we had 2 Type II insulin dependent kids it could get quite expensive. In Calif insulin, test strips and syringes did not require a prescription so the insurance did not cover them.

Speaking of syringes, I stopped at the farm supply store to pick up a couple so I could give one of the cats a dose of antibiotics and it is time to give ALL the pets some wormer I was surprised to learn that you must have a script to buy them. Not the drug just the syringes. I found that you can order them online without a problem you just cant buy them at the store anymore. Sheesh I never met a farmer that was a crack head.

[nuthatch]

Interesting site, Agate! Thanks for the link. Perhaps I'm not seeing it, but I'd like to know how others have determined from this search site, that any payments made to a particular doctor was for a meal or sample meds (the article even states this does not includes samples left at doctor's offices), pens, ect.? Since the report only covers 8/2013 to 12/2014 it doesn't show current info. I know that drug reps aren't allowed the even gift doc offices with pens anymore, at least in California.

All told, 1,617 companies reported 15.7 million payments valued at $9.9 billion. Nearly all of those payments — 14.9 million — were classified as "general payments," covering promotional speaking, consulting, meals, travel and royalties. They totaled $3.5 billion over the 17-month period.Where Did the Payments Go in 2014?

A breakdown of general payments by category, not including research or payments to physician owners of a company.
Royalty or License

$803.5 million


Promotional Speaking

632.4


Consulting Fee

369.4


Food and Beverage

224.5


Travel and Lodging

179.1


Grant


85.1

Education


65

Ownership or Investment Interest


42.6

Gift


28.9

Nonaccredited Training


23.1

Space Rental or Facility Fees


16.1

Charitable Contribution


9.7

Accredited Training


8.1

Entertainment


0.4


Source: Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
Graphic by: Cecilia Reyes/ProPublica
Correction, July 2, 2015: This graphic included incorrect numbers for “Gift" and "Nonaccredited Training.” They have been corrected.

There were far fewer research payments, 826,000, but they were valued at $4.8 billion. The remaining payments related to ownership or investment interests that doctors had in companies. Research and ownership payments are currently not shown in Dollars for Docs.
Open Payments does not include money spent on drug samples left at doctors’ offices and doesn’t include the bulk of the money companies spend on independently administered continuing medical education, which they support with unrestricted grants. The government has tightened the rules for reporting such continuing education in the future.

I found it interesting that the MS drugs, especially the newer ones, have the most money spent promoting them. No wonder, considering that they cost $200,000+ a year and once on them people believe they need stay on them for many years or switch to another equally or even more expensive drug. 10 years X $200,000 = $2 million per person! Multiply that by the thousands of MS patients. Makes my head spin!

Genetech - Rituxan - 61.2M (#1)
Genetech USA - Rebif - 2.3M (#4)
Phizer - Rebif - 1.34M
Teva - Copaxone - 12.3M (#1)
Novartis - Gilenya - 5.9M (#2)
Biogen - Tecfidera - 8.12 M (#1)
Tysabri - 4.89M (#2)
Avonex - 2.51M (#3)
Merck - Aubagio - 3.37M

There's many more MS meds, some that weren't yet around during the period this data was collected.
Anyway, lots of links to articles worth reading on this site.
I found this one interesting. Only registered and activated users can see links., Click Here To Register...

[agate]

After you've searched a doctor's name, on the screen you're seeing you can click on that doctor's name and you'll see which days payments were received. You can scroll down to "Payments: At a Glance" and see a breakdown of the payments.

There are two MS centers in this town I'm in, each headed by a fairly well-known doctor. One was the one who received $202,000. The other received $25,000. For the one who got $202,000, over $49,000 was from Tecfidera, $44,580 from Tysabri, $34,751 from Aubagio, etc.

The categories for the payments are a bit vague: "Consulting," for instance.

There's been so little available for MS until about 25-30 years ago, and now there's a bewildering array of remedies to choose from. It looks as if the drug companies are wildly competing. "Pick me! Pick me!"