HUNDREDS of nurses on the payroll of the pharmaceutical industry are earning bonuses of £3,500 by identifying NHS patients who can be put on costly new drug regimes.

The nurses are provided free to GPs’ surgeries where they are given access to patients’ medical records to check whether they are on the most up-to-date drugs.

Although they are barred from promoting their drugs firms’ products, 15% of their pay is linked to the number of patients or records they see. They are routinely backed up by sales teams.

The nurses are described in promotional literature as being able to “influence” new prescriptions for the benefit of their drugs companies.

Medicines cost the NHS in England more than £7 billion a year, 80% of which is spent on branded products. GPs say there are no incentives to curb their drugs bills, which can vary by up to 50% between similar-sized surgeries.

Under the scheme, nurses are employed by agencies, but paid by the drugs companies, including GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer and Wyeth. They are sent to surgeries, where they conduct audits to identify patients with conditions such as asthma or diabetes who may benefit from a new drug.

The nurse advisers are paid a salary of about £25,000 and usually a bonus of 10% to 15%. The agencies say they are rewarded for the number of surgeries they visit.

Innovex, an agency based in Bracknell, Berkshire, told an undercover reporter that it pays performance bonuses of up to £3,500 to its nurse advisers.

A recruitment consultant at Royce also told an undercover reporter the job was to identify patients with a specific condition. The consultant said: “(It) opens the doors to a medical representative. They come in and close the business.”

Matt Griffiths, joint prescribing adviser at the Royal College of Nursing, said he believed any nurses who were given bonuses to promote certain products were in breach of the Nursing and Midwifery Council’s code of conduct.

Innovex, which employs about 200 nurse advisers, would not comment on how it paid bonuses, but said it always complied with the industry code.

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