Lilly Announces Continued Commitment to Transparency with Faculty Registry
New Web Site Publicizes Lilly's Payments to Health Care Professionals
Source: CNBC
INDIANAPOLIS, July 31, 2009 /PRNewswire-FirstCall via COMTEX News Network/ -- Today Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE: LLY) launched an online registry detailing recent payments it has made to physicians and other health care professionals - a report known as its "faculty registry." The data are for the first quarter of 2009; Lilly will update the registry quarterly going forward.
Lilly faculty are physicians and other health care professionals contracted to provide specific services on behalf of Lilly and the Lilly alliance partnerships. Faculty appearing in the registry either advised Lilly or conducted medical lectures designed for health care professionals and patient education. The site discloses each professional's name, location, description of the services provided and the compensation paid, among other details.
"This registry is consistent with Lilly's efforts to increase transparency," said Jack Harris, M.D., Lilly's vice president of its U.S. medical division. "We see greater transparency as integral to rebuilding trust in our industry."
Nearly 3,400 physicians and other health care professionals are in the dataset. The average payment per service provided is just over $1,000, with health care professionals conducting six activities on average. The data are available at www.lillyfacultyregistry.com.
"Our contracted faculty are key resources in our efforts to improve individual patient outcomes," Harris said. "They advise us on how to bring the best new cures and treatments to market, and give lectures to their peers on Lilly products and disease-state information to help keep them current on the ever-changing field of medicine. And many of our faculty educate patients, at the request of their treating physician, on how to use the Lilly medicine prescribed to them."
Lilly's faculty registry is part of its commitment to enhancing transparency. In 2004, Lilly became the first company to voluntarily make public its clinical trials and its clinical trials data at www.lillytrials.com. In 2007, Lilly added another first by publicly reporting all of its educational grants and charitable contributions and, each quarter, posting the data online at www.lillygrantoffice.com.
Lilly announced last September it would begin to voluntarily disclose physician payments starting in the second half of 2009. In February 2009, Lilly entered into a Corporate Integrity Agreement with the Office of the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and was required to disclose the information.
About Lilly
Lilly, a leading innovation-driven corporation, is developing a growing portfolio of pharmaceutical products by applying the latest research from its own worldwide laboratories and from collaborations with eminent scientific organizations. Headquartered in Indianapolis, Ind., Lilly provides answers - through medicines and information - for some of the world's most urgent medical needs. Additional information about Lilly is available at www.lilly.com.
