Under sweeping settlement, Cephalon will disclose doctor payments

Drugmaker Cephalon is paying $444 million to settle long-running state and federal probes of its sales and marketing practices. Cephalon will also become the first drugmaker to be required under a corporate integrity agreement with the Department of Health and Human Services to publicly disclose its payments to physicians. The five-year integrity agreement says that by early 2010, the company "shall post in a prominent position on its website an easily accessible and readily searchable listing of all physicians" acting as speakers, training as speakers, or serving as consultants for the company during 2009. During the first quarter of 2011, Cephalon will have to disclose the doctors who received any payments from the company in the prior calendar year.