Medical device companies are concerned that next week's government disclosure of industry payments to doctors may lead the public to view all such payments with suspicion.
On Sept. 30, the federal Health and Human Services Department is scheduled to publish data showing 2013 payments over $10 made to doctors by companies that manufacture medical devices or drugs. Industry defenders say most such payments are legitimate, and that publishing them without appropriate context could cause patients to assume such payments are inherently suspect.
The data release, which was mandated by the Affordable Care Act, comes in the wake of a long string of Justice Department settlements with large health care companies accused of paying doctors to prescribe their products and drugs. Virtually every major device maker and drug company has paid out settlements in the past decade after being accused of using money to corrupt medical judgment.
Just last week, Fridley-based Medtronic agreed to pay $362,000 without admitting wrongdoing to settle a lawsuit from 46 states claiming payments to doctors drove up the use of Medtronic cardiac devices among Medicaid patients.
With such news stories common in the media, critics in the industry say the federal government's data release next Tuesday could end up tarnishing doctors who receive large but legitimate payments from industry. On Monday, the device makers' national trade group AdvaMed publicized a Sept. 18 letter it sent to Medicare Administrator Marilyn Tavenner complaining that the CMS has not said whether it will provide context on why doctors receive industry payments.
"Providing context for reported payments and other transfers of value is critical to ensuring patients do not form mistaken impressions that all payments to physicians are suspect," said the letter to Tavenner, which was jointly written by the CEOs of AdvaMed, the Biotechnology Industry Organization, and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, all based in Washington.
The payments disclosed will include cash for travel and meals for training events, research grants, and paychecks for consulting, medical directorship jobs and public-speaking roles. Doctors who work with medical devices in particular will have many disclosures for royalties and licensing of inventions.
The companies making the payments are required to disclose them, although Monday's letter from the industry groups says as much as one-third of all the data that has been disclosed by the firms will not be released for unexplained reasons. The groups want information about what the government is not releasing, and why, because it could be unfair to the doctors whose data is being disclosed.
