How do companies market their products?

Have the new sunshine laws significantly affected how medical device companies market their products?

• Answer:

  For Medical Devices, not yet, mostly because CMS put the reporting off until January 1st, 2013. Many states already had this clause in effect, and the pharma industry studies about the state laws (Sunshine laws have existed in several states since the early 2000's) - although, fairly flawed from a statistical and study design standpoint - showed no real effect of the law on any behaviors of doctors. That is not specifically to the market question, but worth noting. (The University of Colorado School of Pharmacy ran the study) I think the Medical Device space is broad enough that there will be huge swaths of the market largely unchaged by the law, especially those that border on consumer, such as Class II Devices in Glucose and Blood Pressure Monitoring. Larger cost devices, such as those that will be a Capital Expenditure for the organization, may outside the scope of any physician's purchasing (or perscriptive) power. Either way, the only change we know for sure is that they will be forced to report the payments, which is probably not a bad thing. In the age of big-data, http://healthdata.gov, and a shift towards more openness (especially after the issues in the financial sector), the requirement just feels right. Is $10 the right amount? Will it change things? We'll know better  sometime in 2014, when we can analyze the data collected in 2013.