In an embarrassment to the U.K.’s National Health Service, clinical commissioning groups in England accepted hundreds of payments from drug makers and other companies over the past two years that were not publicly disclosed, according to an analysis by BMJ, the medical journal.
Clinical commissioning groups are organizations of local U.K. doctors who issue decisions about hospital care, medicines to be prescribed, and mental health services, among other things. And these groups are overseen by the NHS.
Only two-thirds of 4,600 payments that CCGs accepted from private companies and charities in fiscal years 2015-2016 and 2016-2017 were listed in registers or declarations published by the CCGs, BMJ found. The payments amounted to more than $1.7 million, which was about one-quarter of the overall $6.8 million in payments listed in responses to freedom of information requests filed by the journal.
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