An article on the www.medscape.com website presents information about a new database "Dollars for Docs" on the ProPublica website which identifies individual physicians and how much money they have received from the pharmaceutical companies, often for giving lectures in professional education programs (ProPublica is a journalist organization and won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting). For the time period 2009-2010, the physician receiving the most money is an endocrinologist who received $303,558 for his services. However, pscyhiatry is the medical specialty that appears to dominate the database. Quoting fromt he Medscape article:
|More psychiatrists are listed in the database than any other kind of |specialist. Of the 384 physicians in the $100,000 group, 116 are |psychiatrists. Leading all psychiatrists was Roueen Rafeyan, MD, in |Chicago, Illinois, who received $203,936 from Eli Lilly, AstraZeneca, |Johnson & Johnson, and Pfizer, mostly for professional education programs. | |In an interview with Medscape Medical News, Dr. Rafeyan said that |compensation from pharmaceutical companies does not cloud his |clinical judgment at the expense of patients. | |"The day I'm influenced by that is the day I'm not fit to practice medicine," |Dr. Rafeyan said. The Medscape article is accesible at the following link but one might be required to register with www.medscape.com to read it. http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/731028 Here is a link to the Dollars for Docs section of the ProPublica website: http://www.propublica.org/topic/dollars-for-doctors The database maintained by ProPublica can be accessed on this page and can be used by anyone. Just enter a specific doctor's name to see if he/she is in the database (if so, then the amount received, the company paying, and the "service" being compensated is provided -- worked for me). Perhaps it should come as no surprise that medical schools and teaching hospitals, though they have policies against receiving compensation from pharmaceutical companies, do a bad job making sure that physicians follow these policies; see: http://www.propublica.org/article/medical-schools-policies-on-faculty-and-drug-company-speaking-circuit -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: arch...@jab.org. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=7375 or send a blank email to leave-7375-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
