Doctors may have to declare links to drugs companies

DOCTORS and health officials could be ordered to declare any financial ties to pharmaceutical companies under plans being considered by ministers.

NHS England said an investigation by The Daily Telegraph into senior staff receiving money from drugs firms raised the question of whether the Government should legislate for full disclosure of payments made to health professionals. Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, is understood to be considering a new law.

Multiple inquiries were launched by the NHS yesterday into revelations by this newspaper that health service staff are being paid thousands of pounds

by drug companies lobbying them to use their products.

The undercover investigation disclosed how senior health officials who help decide which drugs are used by GPs and hospitals are being paid to work as consultants for pharmaceutical companies who want the National Health Service to “switch” to medicines they produce.

One staff member, who resigned from his NHS role on Thursday, quoted £15,000 for his eponymous company to organise “advisory board” meetings for drugs companies. Many of the meetings take place in five-star hotels around the world. Some attendees said they were taken to “flashy” restaurants and paid large sums while considering whether to “switch” drugs.

Today, this newspaper discloses the identities of senior NHS officials who were paid by one firm to go on a trip to the German spa town of Baden-Baden earlier this month. The trip was organised by Paul Jerram, head of medicines management at the Isle of Wight Clinical Commissioning Group, which said yesterday that he had been suspended from his role pending an investigation.

Last night MPs on the Commons health select committee called on the NHS to investigate whether the practice was “widespread”.

NHS England and Mr Hunt are looking at the merits of introducing a so-called Sunshine Act, akin to US legislation introduced in 2010 to shed light on financial relationships between pharmaceutical companies and health professionals.

An NHS England spokesman said: “These are extremely serious allegations so we have immediately directed NHS Protect to launch a full investigation of each and every case identified by this press report.

“These allegations also raise the question of whether this country should now legislate for a so-called Sunshine Act, requiring full disclosure of any payments made by a pharmaceutical or device company to a health professional or NHS employee.”

The prospect of legislation to require doctors and other health professionals to declare their financial links to drugs firms was raised in a little-publicised part of an interim report published by Lord Carter of Coles, the Government’s NHS efficiency tsar, last month.

Mr Jerram said that he “acted in the best interests of the NHS seeking the most effective medicines for the benefit of patients and the wider NHS.”