Johnson & Johnson made a big step in the right direction by beginning to disclose details of their payments to physicians. Eventually, my hope is that this will reform what has been a somewhat sleazy practice of paying some doctors not for medical expertise, but for marketing certain medication and medical devices over others. We still have a long road ahead of us.
A recent article in The Wall Street Journal explains some steps Johnson & Johnson has made. The article points out they are disclosing a good deal of information, but the trouble is, it is very hard to make sense of the information that is meant to help the company become more transparent. For example the information is listed on three different websites tied to the company and they do not give totals for how much money was paid out. They leave that up to you to try and figure out.
You can see the various websites by clicking here: Ortho-McNeil-Janssen and here: Centocor Ortho Biotech and here: Tibotec
Is that transparent?
This leads me to believe that Johnson & Johnson must be a little nervous of their disclosures as they are not providing much clarity in their first report. Most telling is they do not expect to report payments to doctors from the medical device side of their business until next year! Why not? Why can’t this information be made public now? Does the company really want to be transparent or just give the illusion that this is the case?
The medical device industry is widely known to sell not on quality and costs, but rather on relationships based on financial payments, fancy trips, and other tricks.
We need a cure for this behavior. We need a cure that will lead to more ethical practices and we needed it years ago. When companies are serious about ethics and transparency it shows.
Who is going to be the leader when it comes to ethics in the Pharma and medical device industries?
I anticipate the day when the true leader steps forward.
Ed Howe blogs regularly at Action for Better Healthcare.