On Oct. 19, 2010 ProPublica published the first in a series of articles on payments to doctors by drug companies. Called “Dollars for Docs,” the series was accompanied by an exclusive database, tracking payments of more than a quarter billion dollars in less than two years to 17,000 doctors nationwide (updates now include 2 million records and payments of more than $2.5 billion).

Several news outlets joined ProPublica in producing initial stories in this series, including:

ProPublica and the New ‘Collaborative Media’

• The Boston Globe• The Chicago Tribune• Consumer Reports • PBS’s Nightly Business

Report• NPR News

For the first time, patients, and the journalists who inform them, can look up doctors to see what payments they’ve taken from Big Pharma -- and they have: the database has recorded more than 7 million page views.

Impact:

“Dollars for Docs” has also blazed a path for a new kind of journalism, spawning local stories in more than 180 outlets. Many news outlets have also included the ProPublica database “widget” on their websites, enabling local readers to check on payments to their own doctors.

Another of our popular news apps, “Prescriber Checkup,” allows the public to assess whether doctors prescribe medica-tions responsibly or to compare their drug choices with those of their peers.

The app has had more than 1.5 million page views to date. The inspector general cited our findings in a report encouraging Medicare to investigate “extreme” pre-scribers, and governement officials announced a host of changes in January, inlcuding one to give Medicare broad new powers to ban doctors for abusive prescribing.

Impact: