This week in Under the Microscope, a special report: KBIA's JESSICA PUPOVAC goes looking for the doctors and the dollars – for information on local doctors who receive payments from pharmaceutical companies in exchange for promoting their products.
Money can complicate relationships—between friends and family and, according to some, between doctors who prescribe medications and the pharmaceutical companies that sell them. It turns out physicians sometimes receive payments for promoting certain drugs – and the public doesn’t always know about those relationships. And public disclosure about these payments isn’t required by law—yet. But the details of some of these kinds of payments – to doctors, from drug companies - have been disclosed over the past year as part of a legal settlement - and the information has been helpfully compiled by the investigative nonprofit news service ProPublica.
Listen to a conversation between reporter Jessica Pupovac with KBIA's Health & Wealth desk producer Jacob Fenston.
Check out how much drug companies give to Columbia physicians.
To see ProPublica's database on dollars for docs,click here.
