How can public authorities and the pharmaceutical industry improve the transparency of payment data?
| Recommendations for improving accessibility of payment data | |
| 1 | Create national-level databases searchable for companies, recipients and payment categories. |
| 2 | Make the databases in the CSV or XLS format for further analysis, while ensuring that the released data can be split using different variables, for example, by year or recipient type to make it manageable for users. |
| 3 | Enable users to explore the data by allowing them to generate data summaries placing payments made or received in a broader context (eg, payments made by other companies or received by the same or other recipient categories, such as medical specialty). |
| Recommendations for improving quality of payment data. | |
| 4 | Publish unique identifiers for payment recipients shared by all companies and used consistently over time. |
| 5 | Introduce clear rules on the levels of aggregation for identifying recipients (eg, clinic, ward or hospital) to enhance the consistency of reporting. |
| 6 | Introduce categories of recipients to enable mapping the distribution of payments in the healthcare system. The categories relating to healthcare professionals could include a standardised list of medical specialties. The categories covering healthcare organisations could reflect their functions in the healthcare system as providers, commissioners or professional organisations. |
| 7 | State clearly whether reported payments should include VAT or other taxes so that payment values from different companies can be compared reliably. |
| 8 | Publish each payment individually instead of aggregating them annually per recipient. |
| 9 | Publish payment descriptions so that the public can understand the activities they fund as well as their context. This requirement would follow the self-regulatory rules existing in relation to the disclosure of payments to patient organisations. |
| 10 | Enforce and publish detail of data quality checks: eliminate missing values, payments with the value of zero and ensure that each recipient has a unique name and is reported at the same level of aggregation by all companies. Other data quality checks should involve cross-checking recipient name and address information to ensure consistency and avoid duplicate reporting. |
CSV, comma-separated values files ; VAT, Value-Added tax; XLS, spreadsheet file format used in Microsoft Excel.