The pharmaceutical industry pays 218 million francs to doctors and hospitals

The Swiss pharmaceutical industry paid around 218 million francs to doctors and hospitals last year. The leader was Novartis with 31 million francs. This is evident from the self-declaration of 65 pharmaceutical companies.

The industry has been reporting its payments since 2015 based on its pharmaceutical collaboration code. Since then, these donations to specialists and health organizations have amounted to 1.4 billion francs.

The research network of publisher Ringier Axel Springer evaluated the figures and published them on Thursday. The publications “Observer”, “Handelszeitung”, “Blick” and “SonntagsBlick” participated in the data analysis.

Science Industries, the pharmaceutical and chemical association, confirmed the payments when requested by the Keystone-SDA news agency. Behind Novartis will be Roche in 2022 with an expenditure of 21.9 million francs. Third place is taken by the American company Pfizer, which raised 20 million.

Since the start of the self-declaration, the comparison has shown that pharmaceutical companies charge more every year for their contacts with specialized staff and clinics. In 2015 they paid 141 million francs. In addition to doctors, pharmacies and hospitals, medical associations, patient organizations and other players in healthcare also receive donations.

Jürg Granwehr, head of pharmaceuticals and law at Scienceindustries, also explained the growth of payments to Keystone-SDA with the number of companies affiliated with the code. In 2015, only 50 companies were members, currently there are 65.

However, many more than fifteen companies have now joined the transparency initiative, as some signatories have disappeared from the list due to mergers, but their donations have remained in total.

In 2022, the amount exceeded the 200 million mark for the first time; In 2021, the corporations paid out 196 million francs, in 2020 183 million.

In 2022, pharmaceutical companies paid 7.5 million francs to doctors, broken down into individual items, 15 percent more than the previous year. According to the trade association, the pre-Covid-19 pandemic level of 11 million francs was not reached again. In general, direct support is shifting from specialists to organizations, the report said.

This was reflected in the sponsorship payments to hospitals, doctor networks, patient organizations, specialist associations and other players. They amounted to 121 million francs, compared to 106 million in 2021.

Under ‘Research and Development’, the companies funded clinical research in hospitals with 89.7 million francs. That is 7 million more than in 2021. According to the association, this fluctuates greatly from year to year, which can be explained by changing intensive activities in clinical research. The hospitals are not shown separately under this item. The pharmaceutical industry speaks of research secrecy.

Granwehr also referred to the high level of individual payment transparency in the sector. On average, 92.4 percent of supported doctors and pharmacists agreed to make their names and the amounts received public on the Internet. For the funded institutions this was 97.2 percent.

The Personal Data Protection Act stipulates that data subjects must agree to the disclosure. According to Granwehr, the level of transparency is much lower in Germany and Austria.

Payments from pharmaceutical companies to players in the healthcare sector are regulated by law. Reimbursement for consulting services, research and training is permitted. To avoid excessive fees for consultancy contracts, only appropriate approaches should be agreed. The Federal Office for Public Health is responsible for supervision.

(jam/sda)