Pharmaceutical payments disclosure in Portugal - the challenges of transparency

Drug prescription is a complex decision for physicians, and pharmaceutical firms may influence prescription behaviour through payments. Such incentives may lead to better prescriptions, but also to low-value choices. To mitigate these risks, some countries have mandated the public disclosure of industry payments. Yet, these systems are often implemented partially and with scrutiny-averse designs. The Portuguese case is characterized by a public centralized platform, which overcomes the major weakness of fragmented models known in the literature. This study aims at evaluating the platform functioning and describe the main payments’ characteristics. The transparency website lists year, paying entity, receiving entity, amount and services provided, and has all-fields text search and sorting. It shows 20 records at once and no batch data fetching is possible. We wrote a script that simulated a user displaying and saving data while ensuring auditability. The resulting dataset was normalised and related entities were manually analysed for the top recipients comprising 33% of the total value. There were 735,649 unique records from 2013 to July 2025, with 451 unique paying entities and 127,604 unique recipients, totalling 782,906,553€. There was a high concentration of donors (13 [2.8%] represented 50% of the value) and recipients (969 [0.7%] for 50% of the value). Average payments varied between 781€ and 1,225€. The 163 individually analysed donor entities averaged payments of 7,412€, and most were medical societies (29%) and private companies (23%), with only 6.1% being individuals. This platform presents good practice in public centralized reporting. Yet, it has limitations to scrutiny in displaying information, providing data for analysis, and ensuring traceability. Average payments are substantially greater than observed in other European countries, since institutions are also included. The marginal representation of individuals casts doubts on actual payment flows.

Key messages

• The Portuguese transparency platform fares well in public centralized reporting, but has limitations to scrutiny in displaying information, providing data for analysis, and ensuring traceability.

• Average payments are substantially greater than observed in other European countries, as institutions are also included, and the low representation of individuals casts doubts on actual payment flows.