Website launches today showing drugmakers' payments to doctors

The so-called Open Payments program is intended to shine a light on potential ethical conflicts and allow patients to look up their doctors online. The first batch of data, however, will be incomplete, covering only a few months at the end of 2013. Journalism website ProPublica says it has tracked 3.4 million payments to health professionals since 2009, totaling more than $4 billion.

The Associated Press: Gov't To Reveal Drug Company Payments To Doctors
Striving to shine a light on potential ethical conflicts in medicine, the Obama administration is releasing data on drug company payments to tens of thousands of individual doctors. As conceived, the so-called Open Payments program was intended to allow patients to easily look up their own doctors online. That functionality won't be ready yet. And although preliminary data to be released Tuesday will be incomplete, it's expected to be useful for professional researchers (9/30).

Propublica/NPR: 4 Years Of Lessons Learned About Drugmakers' Payments To Doctors
On Tuesday, the federal government is expected to release details of payments to doctors by every pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturer in the country. The information is being made public under a provision of the 2010 Affordable Care Act. The law mandates disclosure of payments to doctors, dentists, chiropractors, podiatrists and optometrists for things like promotional speaking, consulting, meals, educational items and research. It's not quite clear what the data will show -; in part because the first batch will be incomplete, covering spending for only a few months at the end of 2013 -; but we at ProPublica have some good guesses. That's because we have been detailing relationships between doctors and the pharmaceutical industry for the past four years as part of our Dollars for Docs project (Ornstein, Grochowski Jones and Sagara, 9/29).