On Tuesday a new federal website will launch, giving the public access to information on financial relationships between drug and medical device companies and medical providers or teaching hospitals.
Anyone will be able to use this website to see if their doctor, dentist or teaching hospital has received payments, grants or gifts — including research funds — from industry.
The law that required this website is sometimes referred to as the “Sunshine Act.”
The initial database release includes information entered by companies about payments and research grants they made in the last five months of 2013.
Advance access to the database shows that industry reported giving the U-M Health System a total of $5.4 million in payments and research grants in the reporting time period. In all, $4.5 million of this was in the form of research grants, which are governed by strict U-M guidelines for industry-funded research. The other $900,000 was largely unrestricted funding for educational activities and other items that industry identified generally as “grants.”
The U-M Health System, including the Medical School and Hospitals & Health Centers, has some of the most comprehensive policies in the country regarding interaction with industry by faculty, staff and the institution as a whole.
Through these, the Health System seeks to foster appropriate industry relationships that support its clinical, educational and research missions — while ensuring that patient care and research are not influenced by industry bias, and that students receive fair and balanced education.
Read more about these policies at umhealth.me/ind-int. The Research and Sponsored Projects unit of the Office of Research also offers information online about the university’s standards for accepting research funding from industry, at orsp.umich.edu/overview/working_with_sponsors_ind.html.
It’s important to note that the category of payment chosen by a company when entering a payment into the database may not accurately match the nature of the payment.
For instance, the Health System does not allow faculty or staff to accept “gifts” from industry, but the value of a newsletter or product information sent by industry to a U-M doctor may have been labeled as a “gift” by industry if the payment does not fit another category.
The Health System and individual providers do not control what categories the companies choose, and the Open Payments database does not provide enough information about the nature of the payment to easily determine what the item is.
