Sunshine Act and Physician Reporting
The Sunshine Act is a government initiative to disclose all pharmaceutical business relationships with physicians to the public. It requires that all payments for research and for consulting made to physicians or their businesses are published in the public domain beginning in the Fall of 2014.
Texas Liver Institute physicians have always made their disclosures publicly.
All payments for research grants paid to TLI physicians are reported to the public. We believe this is the right thing to do, in order to help the public understand the very high costs of performing the most-advanced research in the world, and bringing hope to millions with liver disease.
Funding from pharmaceutical companies pays for our research, allow us to provide care at no charge to patients, and supporting the infrastructure of all the facilities and employees that are needed to make these advances possible. In fact, the Texas Liver Institute has delivered $150,000,000 in free care to the citizens of South Texas over the past two years alone in their drug development program.
Clearly, the cost of developing new therapies is very high and for every 10,000 potential new drugs, only a few ever make it to FDA approval. The pharmaceutical industry and physicians should continue to work together to develop new therapies to treat diseases in adults and children. Grants from pharmaceutical industries provide major funding to research institutes, including the Texas Liver Institute that lead to innovative and cutting edge therapies for patients, including recently announced breakthrough therapies for hepatitis C.
The Texas Liver Institute continues to be one of the most important research facilities in the world in the development of new treatments for liver disease. We are proud that we can provide these services to the many Americans whose lives are affected by serious and life-threatening liver disease.