Hundreds of doctors paid thousands to advise drug companies on their products
One unnamed oncologist was paid $2500 in fees and had a $6036 airfare to Hong Kong funded by pharmaceutical company Roche.
Medicine giant MSD paid out the most - $67,800 - in speakers' fees for six meetings held between January and March.
Fifty-one doctors attended these MSD advisory boards which cost the company a total of $97,000 when hospitality, food and travel costs were added.
Roche spent almost $35,000 on speakers' fees for four meetings and a further $23,000 on hospitality and travel.
One event run by Astra Zeneca and attended by 11 doctors at the Intercontinental Hotel in Sydney cost $33,000, including $18,000 in fees to doctors, $4000 on food, $3500 on accommodation and $3000 on food.
In total, medicine companies spent around $600,000 on the speaking and attendance fees paid to doctors in just three months.
There have been mounting concerns about the conflict of interest in doctors taking pharmaceutical company cash when they are also in charge of writing prescriptions for patients.
A former drug firm saleswoman, Petra Helesic, revealed in 2011 that individual doctors could earn up to $10,000 a year in speakers' fees.
For several years medicine companies have been required by the industry's Code of Conduct to publish information about the $70-$80 million a year they spend on educational events for doctors.
But the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission wants companies to also start revealing how much they pay individual doctors for speaking and consultancy fees, within two years.
A discussion paper released recently by a Medicines Australia working party suggests drug companies should publicly record any payments to doctors over $10.
The Australian Medical Association says $10 is "absolutely trivial" and the amount should be $100 or more.
AMA vice president Professor Geoff Dobb says his organisation is also opposed to drug companies putting out an aggregate list of how much they pay each doctor.
Instead they want a data base where the patient types in their doctor's name and a search engine reveals how much they received from each drug company.
While agreeing that the public had a right to know if their doctor was receiving drug company payments Professor Dobb said "we need to make sure this doesn't become a witch hunt".
Sophie Hibburd, the manager of Medicine Australia's Code of Conduct, said it was responding to community expectations of greater transparency of relationships between doctors and medicine companies.
"The release of these latest reports are a step in ensuring that these important and valuable interactions stand up to public scrutiny," she said.
Source: www.news.com.au
