Articles

Legislation in the city of Philadelphia that would have cut off pharmaceutical marketing research with doctors was defeated in the city council.

New regulations in New Jersey restricting interactions between medical professionals and pharmaceutical manufacturers should not impede marketing research, thanks to the advocacy of the Insights Association, the leading nonprofit association representing the marketing research and analytics industry.

A leading research association testified at a hearing in New Jersey on October 19, 2017 about proposed regulations on payments to medical professionals, urging an exemption for pharmaceutical marketing research incentive payments.

The sponsor of S.B. 790, a bill that would otherwise ban respondent incentives for California doctors participating in most pharmaceutical marketing research, has agreed to the Insights Association's amendment that would exempt bona fide research.

On August 1, 2013, the first reporting period under the Physician Payment Sunshine Act began. Part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka, “Obamacare”), it requires pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers to publicly report many types of payments made to physicians, which will be public. The Sunshine Act was intended to bring transparency to these relationships, to minimize manufacturers’ influence on physicians’ prescribing behavior.

The final Sunshine Act rules explicitly carved out marketing research incentives for physician respondents. CASRO filed comments and MRA lobbied via contacts in Congress. The result caps a 5-year MRA campaign.

Texas governor, Rick Perry, has signed a new health bill, H.B. 300, into law that enforces new obligations in addition to the requirements of the HIPAA privacy rule. The law, which becomes effective September 1, 2012, provides an expansive definition of a covered entity and is likely to include non-covered entities under HIPAA, including survey researchers.