Which Docs Get Paid The Most? Look Here
5 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // October 19th, 2010 // 7:35 am
An in-depth analysis of the money paid by drugmakers to doctors has been undertaken by ProPublica, which has just published a detailed look that is sorted by company, doctor, state and activities for which docs were compensated.
The database includes payments made by seven drugmakers in 2009 and early 2010 - $257 million went to about 17,700 docs. Although as ProPublica notes, more than 70 companies have yet to publicly disclose their payments but will be required to by 2013 under the federal health care reform law. And existing disclosure are not done so on a uniform basis - travel fees and research payments rarely show up.
To give you a taste of the dollars shelled out, Pfizer paid out nearly $10 million, on average, during the third and fourth quarters of 2009 (see here), and a doctor in Santa Monica, California, was the largest beneficiary (take a look). You can slice and dice by state and company right here.
The list of 384 providers includes two who earned more than $300,000 and another 41 above $200,000 by speaking and consulting for one or more of the seven companies. The top earner, by the way, was Firhaad Ismail, who received $303,558 from several companies (see the top earner list).
Equally interesting, there a number of speakers with limited credentials, state disciplinary actions, criminal convictions, multiple malpractice lawsuits, FDA warning letters or hospital sanctions, according to ProPublica. An example: the Ohio medical board concluded that William Leak had performed “unnecessary” nerve tests on 20 patients and subjected some to “an excessive number of invasive procedures,” including injections of agents that destroy nerve tissue. Just the same, Lilly paid him more than $85,000 since last year as a speaker and adviser (more here).
You can read related stories from other media that worked with ProPublica: The Boston Globe, Consumer Reports, NPR, The Chicago Tribune and PBS.
UPDATE: AstraZeneca offered a response on its blog this morning (see here).
Photo courtesy of Jerome Kassirer
Greg Pawelski
There was a study, a bold challenge to the assumption of early ovarian cancer treatment, published in The Lancet. It was a long-awaited global study reporting that women who received early chemotherapy for a recurrence of ovarian cancer did not live longer than those whose treatment is delayed (The Lancet, 2010; 376 (9747): 1120 DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(10)61515-2).
In an editorial in The Lancet, I can understand why Dr. Bradley Monk, a so-called leader in developing new targeted genetic-based treatments, would try to debunk the study because our focus should no longer be on standard chemotherapy but on targeted genetics-based treatments.
But I see that he is on the list of 384 health providers who earned more than $100,000 total from one or more of the seven companies that have disclosed payments in 2009 and early 2010. Besides giving me a taste of the dollars shelled out, it gives me a better understanding of his objection to the study. Thanks Ed! I think I will view Dr. Monk’s view cautiously.
industry insider
This ranking would have looked very different only a few years ago, before academic medical centers put income restrictions on their faculty
ol cranky
I think, were anyone to look very closely at Allergen, you’d find the way they buy docs (especially neurologists) off is actually worse than any of the big pharma mentioned here
Doc
Current day “promotional” speakers, which is what most of the pharma $’s are spent on - is the new payola. Undercover kickbacks, the companies target high volume prescribing MDs even more than “opinion leaders” as speakers. It is understood that because we pay you, you rx our drug.
Rep
Correction Doc…I can assure you that the MDs who earn a lot of money from speaking are usually not extremely high volume prescribers. High earning MDs are on the road speaking rather than seeing patients in clinic. Also, the quid pro quo “we pay you so you rx” is not entirely accurate either. Usually, the MDs who gain experience (rx) will be asked to speak because of their experience with the drug. It doesn’t work well in the other direction (we pay you so you rx).
Payola is more like “consulting” arrangements IMO.