Patient Safety Commissioner: ‘Why we need a Sunshine Payments Act’ (Kath Sansom, November 2023)

Summary

How would you feel if your doctor offered you a treatment your health condition with good results and very little risk? You might snap it up. But what if you subsequently found out your doctor took thousands of pounds from the treatment makers to write a scientific paper promoting it, attend an all-expenses paid conference to talk about it, or spent time working as their expert consultant?

In America, industry must log payments which are published on the open database system. Reporting to this is backed up by law following the American Sunshine Payment Act (2013).

Sling the Mesh is calling for similar legislation in the UK to provide up-to-date evidence on industry money exchanging hands which Kath Sansom discusses in a blog on the Patient Safety Commissioner website.