Medtronic announced today its commitment to voluntarily disclose payments to U.S. physicians.
The company will begin capturing payment data for all of its businesses on January 1, 2010 and will publicly report this information annually.
The first disclosure will occur in March of 2011 and will address payments made to physicians during calendar year 2010.
The company will commission an annual third-party audit to demonstrate its commitment to the accuracy of these postings, and will make a summary of the audit results public.
Medtronic will report on the company website, the amount paid in consulting fees, royalties or honoraria for physicians who receive payments of $5,000 or more per year from Medtronic. Medtronic’s disclosure of $5,000 and above is considerably than the $100 threshold proposed by Senators Kohl and Grassley in the revised Physician Payment Sunshine Act.
Disclosure includes, consulting agreements, education and training, clinical trial design and administration, and product design and safety.
“Relationships between industry and doctors are essential to innovation, education, and training in our industry,” said Bill Hawkins, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. “Through greater transparency about the nature of these relationships, we will help people better understand how important they are to developing life-saving and enhancing products for patients who need them.”
Medtronic initiated a first step toward greater transparency when it launched its online Donations Registry in August 2008 (available at www.medtronic.com).
The donations registry makes public all donations given by Medtronic to
U.S.
customers or organizations affiliated with customers, including patient groups and medical societies.
This is the first device company to voluntarily disclose payments made to physicians and they join Merck, Pfizer, Eli Lilly and GlaxoSmithKline. This is a positive step for Medtronic, and though the threshold is higher than other registries, it reflects the need for relationships between device companies and physician inventors.
Note The Wall Street Journal Health Blog on Medtronic quotes our original article on the Physician Payment Sunshine Act of 2009