Medtronic to Publish Funding Info
April 15th, 2008 joshua
Medtronic is following suit with other medical device makers in becoming slightly more transparent, but as we reported yesterday, this current motivation for the industry to disclose how it spends its money may benefit medical device makers in the long run.
The Minnesota-based maker of controversial implantable cardioverter-defibrillators says it will disclose the amount of money it donates to hospitals and medical groups, the St. Paul Business Journal reports. It will start this policy starting with donations it makes after May 1. Included in this disclosure will be how much Medtronic donates to medical conferences and meetings sponsored by other organizations.
Medtronic’s rare sense of full disclosure is, however, accompanied with the overriding sense of Big Brother bearing down on the medical device and big pharmaceutical industries. Ongoing investigations into how these industries use kickback payments to physicians to gain business advantages, as well as constant cover-ups of damning evidence against a device or drug have prodded Iowa’s Republican Senator Charles Grassley to draft a “Sunshine Act” for the industries.
Sunshine Acts are common laws which mandate disclosure of information to the general public. The legislation is universally accepted as the reason local governments hold meetings in public, not behind closed doors. It also makes most documents public and accessible.
Grassley is seeking a similar transparency from the medical device and pharmaceutical industries.
