Pharmaceutical marketing has become a mainstay in U.S. health care delivery and traditionally has been directed toward physicians. In an attempt to address potential undue influence of industry and conflicts of interest that arise, states and the recently upheld health care reform act have passed transparency, or "sunshine," laws requiring disclosure of industry payments to physicians. The Cent...

Financial conflicts of interest exist between industry and physicians, and these relationships have the power to influence physicians’ medical practice. Transparency about conflicts matters for ensuring adequate informed consent, controlling healthcare expenditure, and encouraging physicians’ reflection on professionalism. The US Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) launched the Open ...

The article by Chimonas and colleagues (Chimonas, DeVito, and Rothman 2017) uses focus groups to explore the attitudes of 42 physicians from three cities on the Physician Payments Sunshine Act (PPSA). The PPSA is a federal program mandated by the Affordable Care Act that collects information from pharmaceutical and medical device companies on their payments to physicians and teaching hospitals ...

OBJECTIVE To review guidance from professional medical associations to physicians on the Sunshine Act, with a focus on industry support for medical publications. METHODS Using 'Sunshine Act' as a search term, we searched PubMed (dates February 2013 to November 2014) and the 'grey literature' using Google and Google Scholar. Online information was extracted from websites of pre-identified prof...

The pharmaceutical industry uses a variety of techniques to promote its products to clinicians, including gifts and free food, advertisements, and detailing by company representatives. Although manufacturers might argue that drug promotion supports physician education, which in turn leads to more informed prescribing, studies have shown that greater contact with drug sales representatives is as...

W ith government funding for bio-medical research stagnant or declining, scientists rely more than ever on industry support. Yet although that support is indispensible, it poses delicate challenges: Scientists and doctors are sometimes tempted to decide what's best for a sponsoring company rather than for patients. These conflicts of interest have sparked growing calls for transparency into ind...