File:Non-R&D payments to healthcare professionals from 15 large pharmaceutical companies.jpg

English: "Non-R&D payments to healthcare professionals from 15 large pharmaceutical companies in Germany, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. (A) and (B) show payment totals, i.e. the sum of individualized and aggregate disclosures, and (C) show the individualized disclosures in proportion to the payment totals."

"Country-level analysis with 15 of 20 companies

Figure 3 summarizes the EUR 735 million worth of payments from the fifteen companies for which we obtained payment totals (Supplemental Fig. 1). This list included 14 of the 15 companies for which the automated data extraction worked in all countries (it excluded Allergan), but included AstraZeneca because its German website allowed manual extraction of summary data (Fig. 2). For the UK and Ireland, we can gauge the payment totals of these companies as a fraction of all payments reported in the respective country's database. In the UK, they accounted for 53.6% of totals registered in the three years (EUR 177.5 million from 123 companies); in Ireland they accounted for 55.6% (EUR 20.1 million from 43 companies). Therefore, this data should indicate country-patterns reliably."

"Figure 3A shows that the payment totals were relatively stable over the three years in the seven countries. They were largest in Spain (EUR 85.1-93.2 million) and Germany (EUR 66.6-69.0 million) and smallest in Sweden (EUR 1.9-2.0 million) and Ireland (EUR 3.6-3.8 million). More money paid for consultancies than for events in the UK (77.5%), Germany (66.3%) and Switzerland (56.3%). The opposite was true in Spain (41.4%), Italy (39.0%), and especially Ireland (32.3%). The Swedish industry Code uniquely prohibits payments for events [23]; hence, virtually all payments in Sweden were for consultancies.

Figure 3B shows these payment totals per registered doctor. Compared to Sweden, totals for consultancies were larger in Spain (4.7 times), Germany (3.0), the UK (3.0), Switzerland (1.8), Ireland (1.8), and Italy (1.7). Compared to the UK, totals for events were larger in Spain (7.7 times), Ireland (4.3), Italy (3.1), Germany (1.8) and Switzerland (1.6).

Figure 3C shows the individualized disclosure rate summed across the fifteen companies. Spain had 100%, or close to 100%, individualized disclosure in all years. In stark contrast, it was only about 20% in Germany regardless of year and payment category. After Germany, Ireland had the lowest individualized disclosure rate for consultancy payments (44.3%) and the UK for event payments (61.0%)."