Pharmaceutical companies paid doctors more than $33 million (US$21.9 million) over three years in Australia to promote their products. More than 6,500 doctors across the country received at least one payment from a pharmaceutical company between November 2019 and October 2022.
The findings were revealed in a peer-reviewed paper published in the Medical Journal of Australia on May 6. The highest payments were in haematology or oncology, followed by cardiology and endocrinology. Rheumatology was the specialty where the greatest number of doctors were recipients of payments.
“Public awareness that pharmaceutical companies make payments to doctors to influence their prescribing is limited, and public disclosure of industry payments could reduce trust in the medical profession,” the researchers observed. The authors recommended these payments should be linked to AHPRA numbers to help identify each recipient. The authors of the paper also noted until recently, disclosure of payments from pharmaceutical companies to doctors was limited.
However, in 2016, Medicines Australia published a new code of conduct that required members to provide lists of all doctors they made payments to and how much was paid. Researchers Malcolm Forbes, Yeshna Bhowon and Barbara Mintzes examined three years of published data from Nov. 1, 2019 to 31 Oct, 2022, and matched each doctor with their Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) listing.
“To promote their products, pharmaceutical.
