Abstract
OBJECTIVES: This study aimed to examine the size and trends in payments from the pharmaceutical industry to healthcare professional organisations (HPOs) in the United Kingdom (UK), and to characterise the conflict of interest (COI) management plans by HPOs who received large payments.
DESIGN: Cross-sectional analysis of non-research payments disclosed in the Disclosure UK database from 2015 to 2021.
SETTING: United Kingdom.
PARTICIPANTS: 148 pharmaceutical companies disclosing payment data and HPOs receiving the largest payments.
MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Total value and median of payments per HPO; existence and content of COI policies among HPOs receiving the largest payments.
RESULTS: A total of 898 HPOs received non-research payments worth £99.9 million (17.4% of non-research payments to all healthcare organisations). The median seven-year payment per HPO was £4509 (interquartile range: £943-£30,360). The annual payments nearly doubled from £9.3 million in 2015 to £17.6 million in 2021. Event payments constituted the largest share (£68.2 million, 68.2%). HPOs representing physicians received over 91.5% (£91.5 million) of all payments, while those related to endocrinology and diabetology - 16.3% (£16.3 million). Over 59.9% (£59.9 million) went to the 30 top-funded HPOs, of which only 17 (56.7%) had a publicly accessible COI policy. However, just 6 (35.3%) of these policies included provisions for payments from external organisations.
CONCLUSIONS: HPOs received nearly one-fifth of pharmaceutical company payments to the UK healthcare sector. These payments were concentrated among a small number of HPOs, which often lacked effective policies for management of COI and payments from the industry.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 16-25 |
| Number of pages | 10 |
| Journal | Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine (JRSM) |
| Volume | 118 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| Early online date | 18 Nov 2024 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 31 Jan 2025 |
Data Availability Statement
All datasets used in this study will be available from the corresponding author upon request.Acknowledgements
The authors appreciate Ms. Saghy Eszter for her work on the data collection and performing inflation adjustment in the payment data.Funding
PO\u2019s former PhD student was supported by a grant from Sigma Pharmaceuticals, a UK pharmacy wholesaler (not a pharmaceutical company). The other authors declared that there were no conflicts of interest for this study. Murayama received grant from Tohoku University School of Medicine and was co-supported by the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation for his research visit at the University of Bath in March 2023. Ozieranski and Scholfield\u2019s work on this study was supported by the grant \u2018Following the money: cross-national study of pharmaceutical industry payments to medical associations and patient organisations,\u2019 awarded by The Swedish Research Council (VR), no. 2020\u201301822. The funders had no role in the design and conduct of the study; collection, management, analysis and interpretation of the data; preparation, review or approval of the manuscript; and decision to submit the manuscript for publication.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| Sigma Pharmaceuticals | |
| Vetenskapsrådet | 2020–01822 |
| Vetenskapsrådet |
Keywords
- Codes of professional ethics
- competing interests (ethics)
- ethics
- health policy
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Medicine
