Psychiatrists who took the most money from makers of antipsychotic drugs tended to prescribe the drugs to children the most often.

As states begin to require that drug companies disclose their payments to doctors for lectures and other services, a pattern has emerged: psychiatrists earn more money from drug makers than doctors in any other specialty. How this money may be influencing psychiatrists and other doctors has become one of the most contentious issues in health care. For instance, the more psychiatrists have earned from drug makers, the more they have prescribed a new class of powerful medicines known as atypical antipsychotics to children, for whom the drugs are especially risky and mostly unapproved.Vermont officials disclosed Tuesday that drug company payments to psychiatrists in the state more than doubled last year, to an average of $45,692 each from $20,835 in 2005. Antipsychotic medicines are among the largest expenses for the state’s Medicaid program. According to their income statements, drug makers generally spend twice as much to market drugs as they do to research them.

Endocrinologists received the second largest amount, according to the Vermont analysis, earning an average of $33,730. As in Vermont, psychiatrists earned on aggregate the most in Minnesota, with payments ranging from $51 to $689,000. The NY Times found that psychiatrists who took the most money from makers of antipsychotic drugs tended to prescribe the drugs to children the most often. These and other stories have helped to fuel a growing interest among state and federal officials to document and restrict payments to doctors from drug makers. At a gathering last month at Columbia Law School in New York, state attorneys general from across the country discussed ways to get similar data for their states. The Senate Special Committee on Aging held the first of a series of hearings on the issue on June 26, which could lead to legislative proposals to restrict and require disclosure of payments and gifts to doctors from drug companies nationwide. Amen to that! Efforts to require disclosure of payments to doctors began almost by happenstance in 1993, when The Minnesota Legislature passed a law that restricts drug companies from giving doctors gifts valued at more than $100 in any given year.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 28th, 2007 at 8:32 pm and is filed under Business, Healthcare, Money Savvy, News, That's Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.