Richard Fogl and Rick Robinson interviewed by Pharma in Focus
Partners Frederick Robinson and Richard Fogl comment on mandatory reporting in the pharmaceutical industry.
The below article was originally published by Pharma in Focus and has been reproduced in full with permission.
Legal warning on new transparency
While Medicines Australia and member companies ponder their response to the ACCC's draft determination calling for even greater transparency, lawyers are warning that we should not rush into a system of greater reporting until the US experience becomes clearer.
Richard Fogl, partner at Norton Rose Fulbright in Sydney, says: "On the one hand there are potential benefits to making more information available, which we may see arise in the US once the data being collected under the Sunshine Act becomes more complete and is properly analysed."
However, he told Pharma in Focus that Australia should not "rush" into a system of greater reporting until the US experience becomes clearer.
"We need to look at how our current system works and whether mandatory data reporting would cause information overload that would result in people jumping to the simplistic conclusion, as opposed to a considered one after having analysed all the data," Mr Fogl said. "Jumping to conclusions is not going to be conducive to a thoughtful analysis of that information."
Rick Robinson, Norton Rose Fulbright global co-head of life science and healthcare based in Washington DC, says following the recent release of US Sunshine Act data that the media has been "pretty balanced about its coverage about the information that is being reported" so far. But it's still a case of wait and see, as there are many uses for individual payments data, aside from consumers looking up their doctors to see what types of payments they are getting.
For example, he told Pharma in Focus the US government is already looking at matching that data with another set of data on doctors' utilisation of outpatient services, and hospitals are checking if their doctors have disclosed conflicts of interest accurately. Lawyers will look at the data if a doctor is involved in a medical malpractice case, "to see if there is a way they can argue if the doctor is corrupt".
Mr Robinson adds that there is also competitive information in there that pharma companies might want to take advantage of. "If you're ... a pharma company and you're not getting traction with a doctor, might you want to look up the information to see if the doctor is getting payments from your competitor, and so you can ... maybe understand why you are not getting any traction with them."
He points out that one of the things that the US government hopes will happen is that over time, payments will go down, as a result of transparency reporting. In the US, where some companies have had to reveal such information as a result of fraud investigation settlements, "I think it is fair to say that they have seen the payments go down over time", Mr Robinson says.
"Because, one, some doctors don't want to have their names in the newspapers as receiving the payments so they'd rather do the work and not be paid. And then ... companies are also really scrutinising the arrangements, saying ''do we really need ten doctors on the advisory panel? Could five be enough?'' So I think transparency will have some disinfecting effect - and that's the idea behind transparency and I think that will turn out to be true."
