Lilly adds food, travel to doc-payment report

Eli Lilly ($LLY) expanded its disclosure on payments to doctors and healthcare groups, adding food and other non-cash gifts to the mix. In its latest quarterly payments report, mandated by a corporate integrity agreement with the feds, the drugmaker toted up $48.1 million in compensation, research spending and other payments.

For more than a year, the company has been detailing payments to doctors who speak, consult and advise on Lilly's behalf. This time around, those payments totaled $13.6 million. The new registry also includes "transfers of value," e.g. business meals, travel expenses and so on, spokesman J. Scott MacGregor told Medical Marketing & Media. The company also disclosed some $30 million in payments to hospitals and universities for clinical trial costs.

As MM&M points out, all drugmakers will have to add those transfers-of-value disclosures to their reporting starting in 2013. Everything from speaking fees to entertainment to food will have to be recorded; only drug samples aren't covered by the mandate. Besides Lilly, Pfizer has begun reporting this type of payment, and several other drugmakers are disclosing payments to doctors.

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