US Sunshine Act

Last Thursday, Senate leaders announced that they had reached an agreement to bring a package of bills to address the nation’s opioid crisis to the Senate floor in the coming days. Among the 70+ provisions is the “Fighting the Opioid Epidemic with Sunshine Provision from Senators Grassley and Blumenthal which Enhances the CMS-run Open Payments, or “sunshine”, program by expanding the types of professionals for whom a drug and device manufacturer is required to report when the manufacturer provides something of value to include: physician assistants, nurse practitioners, clinical nurse specialists, certified registered nurse anesthetists, and certified nurse midwives. To read the …

Dr. José Baselga, the hospital’s chief medical officer, stepped down days after a report by ProPublica and the New York Times that he failed to disclose millions of dollars in payments from the health care and drug industry in research articles. The revelations about Baselga’s disclosure lapses, reported by The New York Times and ProPublica last weekend, have rocked Memorial Sloan Kettering, one of the nation’s leading cancer centers, in recent days. Its top executives scrambled to contain the fallout, including urgent meetings of physician leaders and the executive committee of its board of directors of drugmaker Bristol-Myers Squibb. To …

On Friday, June 29, 2018 the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (“CMS”) released the 2017 Open Payments Data, which covers transactions data collected from January 1, 2016 through December 31, 2016. The total dollar amount of payments totaled $8.4 billion (General Payments: $2.82 billion; Research Payments: $4.66 billion; the total records published totaled 11.54 million. The 2017 Open Payments Data shows a 4.7% drop in the total amount of payments from applicable manufacturers and group purchasing organizations (“GPO”) and a 6.9% drop in the total number of payments. To read the article by Thomas Sullivan

Eight out of ten patient advocacy groups accept money from drug and medical device companies. Pharmaceutical donations make up more than half of the yearly income of some patient advocacy groups. Are these good natured corporate donations, or just another way that Big Pharma exerts their influence beyond corporate walls? That question isn’t an easy one to answer. But the first step in understanding how large of a role pharmaceutical companies play in organizations like the American Diabetes Association or the American Heart Association is to follow the money. Pharmaceutical donations make up more than half of the yearly income …

Use the Search Tool to conduct your own specific search

As a follow-up to Senator Claire McCaskill’s long running opioid investigation and report titled: Fueling an Epidemic: Exposing the Financial Ties Between Opioid Manufacturers and Third Party Advocacy Groups, the senator released the Patient Advocacy Transparency Act of 2018.  The proposed legislation, if adopted, would expand Open Payment reporting to include television programs, websites, and payments to patient advocacy organizations, professional societies, clinical trial organizations, and Continuing Medica Education (CME) providers. This legislation amends the Physician Payment Sunshine Act to: Broaden the reporting definition of “grants” to include various types of educational grants and “capacity building grants”; Also expands reporting for: fundraising …