By Sam Blanchard Health Reporter For Mailonline
Published: 23:30 GMT, 27 March 2019 | Updated: 23:30 GMT, 27 March 2019
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A fifth of NHS bodies are not revealing how much they're being paid by private drug companies, an investigation has found.
Researchers discovered 35 hospital trusts in England would not give details of joint working arrangements they had formed.
These relationships are trials or schemes in which the health service works alongside private pharmaceutical companies, which help to fund them in return.
Private firms paid more than £7.5million to the NHS through these projects in 2016 and 2017, the investigation found.
And experts warn the agreements are being used by companies to 'buy goodwill' and position themselves as potential suppliers.
Some 18 per cent of NHS hospital trusts made deals with private drug companies in 2016 or 2017 but refused to release details of the agreement through Freedom of Information requests
The investigation by the British Medical Journal revealed 18 per cent of the total number of trusts are hiding details of the arrangements.
The journal got details of 93 such projects, many of which, it said, were focused on getting the NHS to use more products being sold by the firm it worked with.
Examples included projects to reconsider ADHD patients' medications and treatment of age-related macular degeneration, a common eye condition.
BMJ investigators, alongide a team of university researchers, sent Freedom of Information requests to all 194 acute hospital trusts in England.
But 13 (seven per cent) of them said they didn't keep a record of any financial benefits from the arrangements, and two said the information was confidential.
Another 39 of them denied being involved in any joint working arrangements even though they had been connected by drug companies' records or other official sources.
Official figures showed in February that 41 per cent of GPs – around 10,000 doctors – are 50 or over and are
