ACRE Perspective in Kaiser Health News

Although the database of payments to physicians from pharmaceutical and device companies, required by the recently passed Physician Payments Sunshine Act, will not be posted until September 2013, some are predicting that its impact will reduce such payments. A recent article in Kaiser Health News described how the new law will require companies to begin recording any physician payments that are worth more than $10 in 2012 and to report them on March 31, 2013.


While advocates of such laws believe that industry “compensation can affect a doctor's choice of drugs or treatment,” exposing such payments, despite their beliefs will not dissuade such behavior—it will dissuade doctors from working with industry. When doctors, who firmly and rightly believe that their work with industry is legitimate, feel their work is being questioned, patients will suffer, and so will future generations of doctors and researchers.


As Dr. Thomas Stossel, the director, division of translational medicine at Harvard, co-founder of the Association of Clinical Researchers and Educators (ACRE) noted, "The use of the term 'sunshine' has an implicit aura of corruption." The reality is, once payments are published, the public and critics will soon begin to realize that there is nothing to hide, and that these relationships are essential for advancing medicine and making people’s lives healthier and longer, as they have for decades.