“Drug companies and medical device manufacturers have long cultivated ties with physicians and hospitals in an effort to promote their wares. This has led to some suspicion that patients may end up with prescriptions for drugs they don’t need or devices they don’t want.”
“So the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services established the Open Payments database — required under the Affordable Care Act — which allows patients to discover whether their physicians or hospitals have any financial ties with drug or device companies.”
“It is designed to give the public a more transparent health-care system, though as the website notes, all information on the Open Payments database is open to personal interpretation…”
“In a new study published by JAMA Network Open, the researchers found an unintended consequence of the public disclosure system: It may have diminished trust in even those physicians who never received payments from drug or medical device firms…” Read the full article here.
Source: An unintended consequence of Open Payments database, which reveals physician payments from drug companies – By Beth Duff-Brown, April 15, 2019. Stanford University.
