Last week’s revelations in the Sunday Herald about Big Pharma payments to health professionals were a wake-up call for the NHS.
Our analysis showed that doctors, nurses, pharmacists and health organisations benefited from around £4.5m in fees and benefits in kind from drug companies.
However, as we disclose today, some doctors who have financial relationships with pharma giants have senior positions in the wider running of the health service.
Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS) – an NHS quango – is responsible for the SIGN clinical guidelines used by health staff across the country.
If a guideline needs to be produced for, say, lung cancer, HIS puts together a team of experts to draw up the advice.
A key requirement for guideline group members must be total transparency of their Big Pharma links.
Professor David Newby, who chaired the SIGN group on acute coronary syndrome, declared links to nearly 20 pharma firms on his register of interest, but HIS does not reveal the amounts or the dates of any payments.
There is no suggestion of any wrongdoing by Professor Newby – who, to his credit, declared the value of some of the payments on a separate database – but a greater level of detail must be demanded by the NHS.
SIGN guidelines are a crucial part of our health service and could influence prescribing practices for hundreds of thousands of people.
The time has come for Holyrood to legislate for a mandatory declaration scheme for all our health staff.
This would include doctors having to name the pharma companies they have financial links with, as well as the amounts received. Anything less could prove corrosive for the NHS.
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