Novartis milestones be proud ! Management take a bow !

Discussion in 'Novartis' started by Anonymous, Jun 2, 2011 at 8:42 AM.

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  1. Novartis (NVS) Splits Pharmaceuticals Division into Two Divisions; Announces Management Changes

    May 17, 2016 11:35 AM EDT

    Novartis (NYSE: NVS) announced today changes to focus its Pharmaceuticals Division by creating two business units reporting to the CEO: Novartis Pharmaceuticals and Novartis Oncology. These business units will form the Innovative Medicines Division at Novartis. The leader of each business will join the Executive Committee of Novartis (ECN) effective July 1, 2016. Paul Hudson will be appointed CEO, Novartis Pharmaceuticals and Bruno Strigini will become CEO, Novartis Oncology. Both will report directly to Joseph Jimenez, CEO of Novartis. With these changes, David Epstein, currently Division Head and CEO, Novartis Pharmaceuticals, has decided to leave Novartis
    The new structure reflects the importance of oncology to Novartis following the successful integration of the oncology assets acquired from GSK. Novartis expects this change to help drive our growth and innovation strategy, with an increased focus and improved execution for both the Novartis Oncology and Novartis Pharmaceuticals business units.

    Paul Hudson, currently Executive Vice President, North America and member of the Executive Committee, AstraZeneca, will join Novartis and lead Novartis Pharmaceuticals. Prior to his role in North America, Paul Hudson served as the leader of AstraZeneca's Japanese business. Novartis Pharmaceuticals will include the franchises Neuroscience, Ophthalmology, Immunology and Dermatology, Respiratory, Cardio-Metabolic and Established Medicines. Mr. Hudson has broad pharmaceutical industry experience and in particular in cardiovascular and immunology, which complement Novartis' major product launches. He will be based at the global headquarters of the Innovative Medicines Division and the Novartis Pharmaceuticals business unit, which will be in Basel, Switzerland.

    Bruno Strigini, currently Head of Novartis Oncology, will lead the Novartis Oncology business unit, comprised of the franchises Oncology and Cell and Gene Therapies. Mr. Strigini joined Novartis in 2014 from Merck & Co. to lead the oncology business and was instrumental in the successful integration of the oncology assets acquired from GSK. He will be based at the global headquarters of the Innovative Medicines Division and the Novartis Oncology business unit which will be in Basel, Switzerland.

    David Epstein, currently Division Head and CEO of Novartis Pharmaceuticals, has decided to leave Novartis and explore new challenges from the US. "We would like to thank David for his substantial contribution to the development and growth of Novartis and its people over many years. He built our leading Oncology business and over the last six years has steered our Pharmaceuticals Division through a period of excellence in innovation, execution and improved financial results. Over the course of his career he and his teams have been responsible for leading the development and commercialization of an industry leading number of new medicines including groundbreaking therapies such as Glivec®, Gilenya®, Cosentyx® and Entresto(TM). I want to express my personal appreciation for all David has done for Novartis and patients and wish him continued success," said Joe Jimenez, CEO of Novartis.

    From July 1, 2016 Novartis will continue to have three focused, customer-facing divisions: Innovative Medicines (formerly the Novartis Pharmaceuticals division), which will include the Novartis Pharmaceuticals and Novartis Oncology business units; Sandoz, the generics and biosimilar division, which includes the Retail Generics, Anti-Infectives and Biopharmaceuticals franchises; and Alcon, the eye care devices division, which includes the Surgical and Vision Care franchises. The divisions will be supported by Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research, Global Drug Development and Novartis Operations, which includes Technical Operations and Novartis Business Services
     

  2. Thu May 19, 2016 10:24am EDT

    Novartis launches new Entresto trials in bid to boost sales
    ZURICH | BY JOHN MILLER
    REUTERS/ARND WIEGMANN


    Novartis's heart failure drug Entresto will be subjected to a battery of new trials as the Swiss drugmaker seeks to boost the medicine after a disappointing introduction.

    Novartis, which on Thursday described the trials as "the largest global clinical program" for heart failure, is seeking among other things to assuage doctors' concerns over switching patients to Entresto when they are stable on older medicines.

    Such worries, on top of insurers' reluctance to pay, have contributed to Entresto's lackluster start since its 2015 approval. Novartis now expects $200 million in 2016 sales, well behind analysts' initial forecasts.

    "These trials will increase our understanding of heartfailure, the patient population who may benefit from Entresto, and could potentially support applications to regulatory authorities," said Vas Narasimhan, Novartis' chief medical officer.

    The new program, called "Fortifying Heart Failure Clinical Evidence and Patient Quality of Life" or "FortiHFy", will include 40-plus trials in 50 countries over five years.

    Entresto's stuttering launch was overseen by Novartis pharma chief David Epstein, who quit this week.

    Recent heart drugs have gotten off to sluggish starts, partly due to fears their cost - about $4,500 a year for Entresto - could lead patients to quit medications.

    Novartis forged deals with insurers Cigna and Aetna to be reimbursed based on "health outcomes" in a bid to overcome price concerns.

    Chief Executive Joe Jimenez, who has stuck to his peak annual Entresto sales forecast of $5 billion, has also complained some physicians are slow to switch patients who are stable on existing medicines including enalapril, a 30-year-old drug.

    Jimenez is keen for new trials to bolster evidence that patients can be switched safely; that patients can start on Entresto before taking other drugs; and to reveal more information about outcomes for those who switch to Entresto while in hospital.

    Trials are also aimed at expanding Entresto's treatment label to additional kinds of heart failure and for patients after a heart attack.

    Analysts said Novartis' plan showed its determination to convince investors it is doing everything possible to accelerate sales and reassure doctors.

    "It's likely extra-large", said Stefan Schneider, from Bank Vontobel in Zurich, of the program's scope. "We assume a more extensive umbrella program is planned than if the existing clinical data would have sold the drug by itself."

    Novartis did not release FortiHFy's cost.

    Future trials will also include "much more U.S. physician participation," Novartis has said. Seven percent of patients were American in earlier trials, short of the 10-12 percent average and something analysts have flagged as one reason U.S. doctors have not rushed to prescribe.

    (Reporting by John Miller; Editing by Mark Potter)
     
  3. anonymous

    anonymous Guest

    OK. This is no longer funny...
     
  4. Not-So-Sucessful Launch
    Since the approval of the drug by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in July 2015, the novel molecule has not been unable to grab the slice of the market it was projected to. In 4QFY15, the drug managed to generate merely $5 million, despite high expectations seen in the analysts’ consensus. Entresto generated revenue of $17 million in 1QFY16, despite the analysts’ expectation of the range of $25-30 million.
     
  5. Gleevec Scam

    Gleevec Scam Guest

    Medicare spent $996 million on Gleevec in 2014 after the cancer drug’s price spiked

    A year’s supply of Gleevec can be produced for less than $200, according to Andrew Hill, a researcher at the University of Liverpool. When the drug was introduced, in 2001, its U.S. price was $30,000 a year. At that level, it would have recouped its development costs in just two years, according to a letter from 100 cancer specialists, published in the medical journal Blood in 2013. The price is now up to $120,000 a year in the U.S. (It’s priced at drastically different rates around the world: $25,000 a year in South Africa, for example, and $34,000 a year in the U.K.)

    As Gleevec’s price has climbed, so has the burden on taxpayers. Medicare spent $996 million on the drug in 2014, up 158 percent from 2010. Most of that increase is the result of price hikes; Gleevec’s U.S. list price jumped 83 percent from January 2010 to January 2014, from $139 to $255 per 400-milligram pill. (A generic is expected to lower costs in the future.)

    Eric Althoff, a spokesperson for Novartis, said via e-mail that the company’s pricing isn’t, and shouldn’t be, based on the cost of developing and manufacturing its drugs.
     
  6. anonymous

    anonymous Guest

    That is correct. Pricing is based on the target market's willingness to pay.

    Problem with Medicare is that it has no mandate to negotiate what they are willing to pay.

    A bit of a double standard since we bargain with suppliers all the time.
     
  7. 5/20/2016
    BOGOTÁ, Colombia—The government will override Novartis AG’s patent on a cancer medication by month’s end and open it up to generic manufacturers unless the Swiss pharmaceutical maker accepts a price cut, the country’s health minister said Friday.

    Citing severe strain on its universal health-care budget, Colombia says it needs to break Novartis’s control on imatinib supply and issue a compulsory license—an exception to a patent when deemed a matter of public interest.

    The government says it plans to make the drug—marketed as Gleevec or Glivec for use against leukemia—available at a cheaper price, despite what the Health Ministry says has been international opposition to the move.

    “Technological pressure and high drug prices have brought the health-care system to a financial crisis,” Alejandro Gaviria, minister of health and social protection, said in an emailed. “Colombia is a paradigmatic case of a middle-income country, with a growing health system and with rising expectations from its middle class, which cannot pay high prices for new drugs.”

    Novartis spokeswoman Julie Masow said the company “is aware and sympathetic” to the financial challenges in Colombia
     
  8. anonymous

    anonymous Guest

    Sad to see the company Vasella unleashed which brought them to #1 is now falling apart. Start at the top and replace Joe Jimenez before he does any more damage. Patients, Doctors and thousands of workers are relying on this company not to fail!
     
  9. Some top lawmakers are up in arms that U.S. officials allegedly pressured the Colombian government to nix a compulsory license on Novartis’ ($NVS) cancer med Gleevec. Now, they’re demanding answers from U.S. trade representatives.

    “We are writing to express our serious concern that, according to recent press reports, officials may have discouraged Colombian government officials from issuing a compulsory license” on Gleevec, a bipartisan group of Congressmen including Rep. Sander Levin (D-MI), a ranking member of the House Ways and Means Committee, wrote in a letter to U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman.

    A compulsory license would allow generic versions of Gleevec to be sold in Colombia, despite its current intellectual property protections.

    Earlier this month, two leaked letters written by Andrés Flórez, a representative of the Embassy of Colombia in Washington, D.C., showed trade tensions tied to the issue. Flórez said that he had met with Everett Eissenstat, chief international trade counsel of the Senate Finance Committee, and that Eissenstat pressured Colombia not to move ahead with its plans.

    Eissenstat said that the U.S. pharma industry is worried that Colombia’s decision to grant a compulsory license “might become a precedent that could be applied for any patent in any industry,” Flórez wrote in a letter. The Finance committee representative also allegedly threatened Colombian diplomats that the move could result in less funding for President Obama’s $450 million "Paz Colombia" peace initiative.

    But issuing a compulsory license is acceptable under U.S. and international trade agreements, lawmakers pointed out in their recent letter. “U.S. officials should respect the flexibilities” granted to countries as part of those pacts, the group wrote.

    Even though issuing compulsory licenses can create problems between companies and governments, lawmakers “are not aware of any actions that Colombia has taken or is considering taking” that run afoul of trade rules, the group said in its letter.

    Colombia has not issued a compulsory license for any other product. And the government is only considering granting one for Gleevec, or Glivec as it’s known in some countries, “based on its individual merits and not as part of a blanket policy,” the group wrote.

    “There are growing concerns about the very high and increasing costs of pharmaceuticals in the United States and in other nations,” the Ways and Means members wrote. “As policymakers struggle to address this issue, we should not seek to limit the existing, agreed upon flexibilities public health authorities have to address these concerns.”

    Colombian health officials have said that they would try to work with Novartis to lower the price for Gleevec. A 400 mg tablet of Gleevec costs 129,000 Colombian pesos, about $43. The Colombian government wants that price lowered to $18.50, but Novartis has reportedly dragged its heels on pricing.

    But the Colombian officials said their patience is limited. “We have not shut the door to negotiations. We’re keeping it open, but not for much longer,” Colombian Health Minister Alejandro Gaviria toldReuters last week.

    Novartis said that it is "actively seeking a resolution to discussions around our Glivec patent in Colombia that will benefit patients, innovation and the healthcare system," the company told FiercePharma in an email. "Discussions with stakeholders, including the Colombian ministries of Health and Trade, have covered a range of topics--none of which have been agreed or finalized."
     
  10. anonymous

    anonymous Guest

  11. Pure Scum

    Pure Scum Guest

    The Backdoor Way the United States Pressures Other Countries to Keep Drug Prices High


    Colombia is worried that the U.S. government will pull $450 million in funds promised to the country this year, if it attempts to lower the price of a bestselling cancer drug.


    A one-year supply of Gleevec (also sold as Glivec), a cancer drug manufactured by the pharmaceutical company Novartis,costs nearly double the per capita income of individuals in Colombia, The Huffington Post reports. In an effort to make the drug more affordable, Colombia wants to issue a "compulsory license," which would allow competitors to sell generic versions of the drug for a dramatically lower price.

    After meeting with U.S. officials, however, Colombian diplomat Andrés Flórez wrote a letter alleging that members of Congress with ties to the pharmaceutical industry might resort to denying funds that President Obama pledged to the country in February — funds meant to help Colombia combat Marxist rebels in an ongoing conflict — if Colombia goes forward with the compulsory license.


    Knowledge Ecology International, a nonprofit group that leaked the letters from Flórez earlier this month, wrote a letter to Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee who was reportedly involved in the Gleevec discussion, requesting clarification on the issue.
    "If these letters sent by the Embassy of Colombia are accurate, this is a highly inappropriate and wholly objectionable attempt to interfere with the right of the Colombian government to proceed with this compulsory license through threats and distortions," Knowledge Ecology International, joined by three public health organizations, wrote. "In our view it is particularly unconscionable that this be tied in any way to funding to support the peace process."

    The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and "members of the Senate Finance Committee" were named in Flórez's letter as parties that resisted Colombia's compulsory license proceedings for Gleevac. Both have denied threatening to take away peace funding and spokespersons for USTR and Hatch said that the meeting with Colombian officials was routine business, The Huffington Post reports.


    But Colombia Health Minister Alejandro Gaviria says that the controversy is part of an ongoing effort by the pharmaceutical industry to prevent middle-income countries from controlling drug pricing.
    "They're very afraid that Colombia could become an example that spreads across the region," Gaviria told The Associated Press. "For us, it's a question of survival."

    Novartis contends that Colombia has had control over the pricing of Gleevec since 2011 and that two generic versions of the drug already exist. "But the Health Ministry says generic competition that previously existed has been all but driven out by Novartis' aggressive marketing and competitors' fear of prosecution for infringing the patent," the AP reports.

    The patent on Gleevec recently expired in the U.S., causing sales to plummet 40 percent in the first quarter of 2016. In Colombia, however, Novartis' patent on the drug isn't set to expire until 2018. Novartis rejected Colombia's proposal to lower the cost of Gleevec this year, arguing that such pricing and patent negotiations should only take place under extraordinary circumstances.

    Novartis is "actively seeking a resolution to discussions around our Glivec patent in Colombia that benefits patients, innovation and the health care system," spokesman Eric Althoff told the AP.

    ATTN: reached out to Novartis, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, Sen. Hatch's office, and the Colombian Embassy for comment. Representatives were not immediately available.
     
  12. Korea Woes

    Korea Woes Guest

    Novartis Korea embroiled in legal trouble


    By Lee Hyo-sik

    [​IMG]
    Moon Hak-sun, former CEO of Novartis Korea
    Novartis Korea's legal troubles will likely continue for some time, as prosecutors are looking closely into allegations that the company offered kickbacks to doctors for years in return for prescribing its products.

    Following a raid of the Swiss pharmaceutical giant's local office in February, investigators have summoned Moon Hak-sun, its first Korean CEO whose duties have been suspended since April, and other company executives for questioning.

    The prosecution has said investigators are gathering evidence to prove that Novartis Korea provided cash and other kickbacks, known in the pharmaceutical industry as "rebates," to doctors. The prosecution has refused to comment on when it will announce the results of its probe, the results of which are being anticipated by multinational pharmaceutical firms operating here.

    Offering such rebates has been a long-running but illegal practice which has been blamed for hiking drug prices.

    "Moon was temporarily suspended from his duties as CEO of Novartis Korea on April 7," a company official said. "Moon agreed to be relieved from his post. Since then, an acting CEO dispatched from the Swiss headquarters has been managing the firm."

    On April 22, the Seoul Western District Prosecutors' Office sent investigators to the office of Novartis Korea in downtown Seoul, confiscating financial records and other company documents.

    The prosecution suspects that the Swiss drug maker had offered rebates to doctors and medical school professors in the form of traffic expenses and writer's fees. In exchange, the company asked the doctors to prescribe its medicines for their patients.

    A former employee of an unnamed agency, which allegedly delivered kickbacks to doctors on behalf of Novartis Korea, gave the information to the authorities, according to an executive at one of the multinational drug companies.

    "The prosecution initiated a probe into Novartis Korea after receiving credible tips from a person with knowledge of the company's provisions for rebates to doctors," said the executive, who declined to be named. "The prosecution will certainly indict Moon and other company officials, and seek to obtain an arrest warrant from the court to secure his custody during trial."

    The executive claims that Moon is a scapegoat for his non-Korean predecessors. "Given that Moon took the company helm only last September, most of the irregularities took place under the watch of his predecessors. I think Novartis is not interested in looking out for Moon. What the company wants is to have him take full responsibility for its past deeds."

    Novartis Korea is the second-largest multinational drug company operating in Korea. It generated 455.3 billion won in sales last year with an operating profit of 20.6 billion won.
     
  13. what a scam

    what a scam Guest

    http://www.dcclothesline.com/2016/06/04/who-runs-washington-the-long-reach-of-big-pharma/

    Leveraging peace and stability in Colombia to force Bogotá to capitulate to pharmaceutical giants like Novartis seems extreme, but upon closer examination of other episodes in recent history – including the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, the subversion of Libya and Syria, and admitted US ambitions to encircle and contain China, such coercion is a common feature of the Wall Street-London centric “international order” Washington eagerly promotes.

    What is perhaps most appalling about this most recent episode is that Novartis’ “patent” is for a drug developed using public funding over several decades through the United StatesNational Institutes of Health (NIH).

    Indeed, in 1990, NIH-funded researcher Dr. Brian Druker began developing model systems integral to bringing “Glivec” to market. He would eventually partner directly with Ciba-Geigy (now Novartis) before clinical trials began.

    The NIH’s own report, “Fighting Cancer: Ushering in a New Era of Molecular Medicine (.pdf),” would proudly admit:

    The NIH’s National Cancer Institute (NCI), along with many other public and private organizations, played a vital role in developing Gleevec®.

    The nature of pharmaceutical giants building fortunes upon publicly funded research, with Gleevec serving as a primary example, was in even the subject of an entire paper published by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under the title, “Public R&D Investments and Private-sector Patenting: Evidence from NIH Funding Rules (.pdf).”

    Who Runs Washington?

    If corporate-financier interests would jeopardize the peace and stability of an entire nation to maintain a monopoly over a single pharmaceutical – developed not even by them, but by publicly funded research – what would these same sort of corporate-financier interests do if the stakes were infinitely higher – say as high as pushing through a region-wide trade deal that would give such interests monopolies not over a single chemical compound, but over entire industries?

    It is clear that elected representatives in Washington, London, and across the rest of the European Union do not represent the interests of those who elected them. Instead, they are clearly subject to and instruments of corporate-financier special interests – not just from across the pharmaceutical industry, but from a variety of industries ranging from finance and banking to big-oil, big-ag, and big-defense.
     
  14. anonymous

    anonymous Guest

    The problem here is this.

    The average American voter doesn't really care, otherwise the revolution would have already been televised.
     
  15. KaBoom

    KaBoom Guest

    Colombia to Force Novartis to Lower Prices of Cancer Drug
    By JOSHUA GOODMAN, ASSOCIATED PRESS 6/9/2016

    Colombia's government will unilaterally force the world's largest drugmaker Novartis to lower prices of a popular leukemia medicine in a closely followed patent dispute, authorities said Thursday.

    Health Minister Alejandro Gaviria told reporters that two weeks of negotiations with the Swiss company had ended without an agreement. As a result, he's following through on a threat to declare the drug Gleevec in the public interest, the first step in breaking Novartis' monopoly in the South American nation.

    "Negotiations have ended definitively," Gaviria said, adding that the resolution that will be published in the coming days is likely to mandate lower prices for the medicine but not throw open production to generic rivals as was originally contemplated.

    Gleevec has been the top-selling drug for Novartis since 2012, bringing in $4.7 billion worldwide last year, or about 10 percent of the company's total revenue. It won't be the top seller much longer, though. Gleevec got generic competition on Feb. 1 in the U.S., which accounts for half of its sales. In Colombia, the patent is due to expire in July 2018.

    The drug maker's increasingly public feud with U.S. ally Colombia over its patent has drawn attention because of fear in the pharmaceutical industry that Colombia's decision will set a precedent for middle-income countries grappling to contain rising prices for complex drugs. Memos written by diplomats at Colombia's Embassy in Washington and leaked to the non-profit Knowledge Ecology International describe the intense lobbying pressure by the pharmaceutical industry and its allies in the U.S. Congress to avoid tapping a legal mechanism they consider should only be used in the case of epidemics and public health emergencies.

    In one memo, the embassy warns that breaking Novartis' patent for Gleevec could hurt U.S. support for Colombia's bid to join the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership trade zone and even jeopardize $450 million in U.S. assistance for a peace deal with leftist rebels. The memos followed meetings between Colombian diplomats and officials from the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and a Republican staffer on the Senate Finance Committee whose chairman, Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, has close ties to the pharmaceutical industry.

    But Colombia's actions have also elicited much praise from the World Health Organization and public health experts worried about access to life-saving medicines and overburdened public health systems like Colombia's.
     
  16. Calif. High Court To Review Novartis Generic Drug Suit
    By Steven Trader

    New York (June 9, 2016, 5:45 PM ET) -- The California Supreme Court will review a state appeals court’s March decision that brand-name drugmaker Novartis could be held liable for negligent misrepresentation and failure to warn of the alleged dangers of a generic version of its asthma medication Brethine, which it stopped making years before the damage occurred.
    California’s high court gave no reasoning Thursday when it granted the pharmaceutical giant’s petition for review, after an appellate panel on March 9 concluded that Novartisbelonged in a lawsuit brought by twins who claim they developed autism because their mother in 2007 ingested a generic version of Novartis’ name-brand asthma medication Brethine, a form of terbutaline that doctors at the time were using for the off-label purpose of preventing preterm labor.

    The appellate court’s ruling overturned a lower state court’s decision that Novartis didn’t belong in the suit because the mother had not ingested its specific medication and because Novartis had given up the rights to its name-brand Brethine drug six years before the twins’ mother even took the generic version.

    The appellate court, however, found that while Novartis couldn’t be held strictly liable for any damage done by the generic drug, it could still be found to have negligently failed to warn of the dangers of its own drug in 2001, which could have had a direct effect on doctors’ willingness to prescribe the generic version in the future, the court reasoned.

    The panel relied heavily on a fellow state appellate court’s 2008 decision in Conte v. Wythe Inc., which concluded that brand-name drugmakers owed a duty to include proper warning labels on their own drugs and should shoulder at least part of the responsibility if injuries result from the consumption of generic versions of their drugs if the originals failed to warn.

    Novartis manufactured Brethine, the name-brand version of the drug terbutaline, and was responsible for its label warnings through 2001, the twins said. Though Novartis sold production rights of Brethine in 2001, the generic version of the drug, which allegedly caused the twins' autism, was biologically identical to Brethine and the generic product's label was identical too, the pair has alleged.

    They contend that a plethora of scientific evidence showing the potential dangerous effects of terbutaline on pregnant mothers existed in 2001, but claim that Novartis sold the rights to Brethine rather than update the medication's warning label.

    The twins said Novartis should have foreseen that a subsequent generic manufacturer would not change the label information, and that had Novartis included information about the possible birth defects, the future generic-drug makers would have included those warning labels as well, given the generic version was an identical composition.
     
  17. New Open Payments data shows Novartis was biggest spender in 2015
    By Shannon Muchmore | June 30, 2016
    Payments from drug and device companies to physicians and teaching hospitals increased slightly in 2015. Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corp. paid the most by far.

    The CMS released the second full year of Open Payments data Thursday. The database is made publicly available was established under a sunshine provision in the Affordable Care Act.

    All told, nearly 620,000 physicians and about 1,100 teaching hospitals received $7.52 billion in payments and ownership and investment interests in 2015, according to tallies compiled by the CMS. Last year's total was $7.49 billion.

    Swiss drug giant Novartis paid out nearly $540 million. Novartis could not be reached for comment at deadline.

    The next highest group was Roche subsidiary Genentech, which makes several expensive cancer drugs, at about $470 million. Most of the Genentech payments reflect royalties to City of Hope, the California comprehensive cancer center that holds the patents on research underlying Genentech's biggest drugs, Avastin, Rituxan and Herceptin.

    About half of the overall payments were for research and $2.6 billion were in non-research related payments. A little more than $1 billion was ownership or investment interests.

    Nuclear medicine physicians received the highest average payment, followed by doctors in neurological surgery, orthopedic surgery, radiology and neuromusculoskeletal medicine.

    The American Medical Association, which has criticized the database for publishing data without context and often inaccurate, said in a statement Thursday that many physicians have not reviewed their data because of errors and registration challenges.

    “The integrity goals of the Open Payments database will not be met as long as physician review is obstructed by a registration procedure that is confusing, time consuming and overly burdensome,” the organization wrote.

    Acting CMS Administrator Andy Slavitt, however, called the database a “trusted consumer resource."

    “This transparency, along with our other transparency programs, helps further our mission of achieving a high-quality health care system that ensures better care, access to coverage and improved health at lower cost,” Slavitt said in a news release.
     
  18. anonymous

    anonymous Guest

    Way to go! Keep it classy and outspend the competition, baby!