MA gift ban law intact?

Click here to read the Wall Street Journal's Health Blog's posting on this bill.

Mass. House reverses gift ban legislation

From the Arlington Advocate article:

Reversing course on a new law aimed at diminishing the influence ondoctors of pharmaceutical and medical device companies, the House on Wednesday voted to strike the so-called gift ban law, which critics say has hurt commerce in the medical and restaurant industries.

It will be interesting to see what happens during the reconciliation process that needs to take place in committee!  Click here to access this article. 

ACCME provides add'l guidance on appropriate role of industry folks in CME

Click here to access the news release (a link to the additional guidance is provided within the news release).

Are docs out of touch with the whole physician-industry relationship media thing?

The results of a survey on physician attitudes about the marketing practices of industry has just been published in the Archives of Surgery and might provide some insight.  Click here to access the article (free full text!).  Hat tip to FierceHealthcare.

European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations releases "Leadership Statement on Ethical Practices"

Click here to access the EFPIA press release.

PharmedOut Conference Happening Today!

PharmedOut is at this very moment conducting their conference "Prescription for Conflict: Should Industry Fund Continuing Medical Education?".  Click here to access the conference agenda.  Click here to read Policy and Medicine's blog posting on this conference.

University of Michigan just says no to commercial support of CME

From the New York Times article:

Dr. James O. Woolliscroft, dean of Michigan’s medical school, said leading faculty members “wanted education to be free from bias, to be based on the best evidence and a balanced view of the topic under discussion.”
 ...
The debate over whether the medical profession should develop an industry-free model of postgraduate education is a delicate one. A conference at Georgetown University on Friday, called “Prescription for Conflict,” will highlight the arguments on both sides through presentations by federal health officials, professors from leading medical schools, hospital executives and a Senate investigator.  

Click here to access the NYT article.

Medical device consultant and company "divorce"

From the New York Times article "Surgeon vs. Knee Maker: Who's Rejecting Whom?:

IT was a long, fruitful medical marriage that is fast becoming an angry public divorce, one that offers a rare look at a clash between a top-shelf consultant and his corporate patron over patient safety.
...
Amid the booming use of artificial joints in the United States, the breakup between Dr. Berger and Zimmer highlights what experts say is a troubling situation for patients and doctors: when disputes arise about orthopedic implant safety, there are no independent referees or sources of information because no one tracks the performance of the devices.

 Click here to access the NYT article.

CMSS Voluntary Code of Ethics for Interaction with Industry

From the CMSS's press release:

The Council of Medical Specialty Societies (CMSS) today announced the release of the CMSS Code for Interactions with Companies. The code provides detailed guidance to medical specialty societies on appropriate interactions with for-profit companies in the health care sector. The voluntary code is designed to ensure that societies’ interactions with companies are independent and transparent, and advance medical care for the benefit of patients and populations. CMSS represents 32 leading medical professional societies, with a collective membership of more than 650,000 U.S. physicians.

Click here to access the press release. Click here to access the code.

Physician Sunshine Act now law

The Pew Prescription Project has just posted a fact sheet this new law—an excerpt:

The Physician Payments Sunshine provisions in health care reform legislation require drug and medical device manufacturers to publicly report gifts and payments made to physicians and teaching hospitals.

The Physician Payment Sunshine provisions were included in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2009 (H.R. 3590, section 6002) which was signed into law on March 23, 2010.

Are gifts and payments limited?
The law requires public disclosure, but does not limit financial relationships.

Who must report? How often?
All U.S. manufacturers (and other entities under common ownership) of drug, device, biologics, and medical supplies covered under Medicare, Medicaid, or SCHIP must report payments on an annual basis to the department of Health and Human Services, which will post the information on a public website. The Secretary of Health and Human Services is further required to submit annual summary reports to Congress, as well as annual reports to each state.

What sort of payments count?
The health care reform law requires disclosure of payments whether cash or in-kind transfers to all covered recipients including: compensation; food, entertainment or gifts; travel; consulting fees; honoraria; research funding or grants; education or conference funding; stocks or stock options; ownership or investment interest; royalties or licenses; charitable contributions; and any other transfer of value as described by the secretary.

Click here to access the PPP fact sheet.

Stanford extends policy to adjunct faculty

From the New York Times article:

The Stanford University School of Medicine plans on Monday to introduce rules that would prohibit its volunteer teaching staff — called adjunct faculty — from giving paid speeches drafted by the makers of drugs or medical devices.

Stanford already has one of the most comprehensive policies in the country governing the interactions between academic faculty and the medical industry. The policy, enacted in 2006, is intended to limit potential industry influence on day-to-day clinical practice and medical education, according to a Stanford press release.

The policy prohibits faculty members from participating in industry speakers’ bureaus in which drug and medical device makers pay a physician to give company-prepared speeches to doctors about company medical products. It also prohibits Stanford faculty members from accepting free gifts, including drug samples for patients.

And as of Monday, the 660 community physicians who volunteer their time to teach at Stanford will also have to abide by the same policy — or give up their Stanford titles.

Click here to access the NYT article. Hap tip to Pharmalot.

New Jersey AG tries to clamp down on pharma

The AG's recommendations, as reported in the WSJ's Health Blog, are that physcians must:

• No longer accept food from industry, whether in office or in restaurants (this includes their office staff).
• Disclose, at the time of relicensure, whether they accepted more than $200 worth of payments and/or gifts from industry during the preceding two years.

Another AG recommendation is to curtail prescription data mining (this would require the state legislature to pass a new law).

The end of MECCs?

From the Wall Street Journal article:

Health legislation moving through Congress would force drug makers to disclose how much they spend on continuing medical education classes for doctors, sparking some resistance from the industry.

For-profit continuing medical education companies have seen revenue fall by double digits in the last year, according to industry statistics, following congressional investigations into the influence of drug makers on medical research and course content.

Click here to access the WSJ article (sub. req.).

ICMJE proposes new disclosure policy for authors

From the American Medical News article:

An influential group of medical journal editors in October announced a new, more probing conflict-of-interest disclosure form that it hopes will become the industry standard. The effort comes in response to criticism that medical journals have failed to properly inform their readers about authors' financial relationships with industry.

The uniform disclosure form, adopted by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, asks authors submitting for publication to disclose any payment for the research that generated the article as well as other kinds of industry relationships such as consultancies, honoraria or stock options from the last three years.

The form also asks authors to disclose whether spouses or children have financial relationships with "entities that have an interest in the content of the submitted work." Writers also should provide "any relevant nonfinancial associations or interests" of a personal, political or religious nature "that a reasonable reader would want to know about."

Click here to access the AMN article. Hat tip to FierceHealthcare.

Sunshine in the health care reform bill?

From the New York Times article:

As part of the health care overhaul under consideration by Congress, lawmakers have included so-called sunshine provisions intended to shed light on the financial relationships between the medical industry and doctors.

The targets are common business practices like drug company payments to doctors for speeches and consulting services, which have the potential to influence patient care and drive up the nation’s medical bills.

But if previous attempts by state legislatures, federal agencies and academic hospitals are any indication, such sunshine efforts are all too vulnerable to cloud cover.

Click here to access the NYT article.

ACCME to post additional information on providers

From the New York Times article "Steps to Greater Accountability in Medical Education":

Dr. Murray Kopelow, chief executive of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education, said he would make public “within weeks” a previously confidential listing of classes and companies that violated rules against commercial bias.

And at the urging of a prominent critic who successfully filed a complaint alleging bias in a specific course, Dr. Kopelow said his group was reviewing a proposal that would require educators to notify doctors and furnish corrective materials whenever it is later found that the class material was biased in favor of a drug firm.
...
A council spokeswoman, Tamar Hosansky, said the only violations to be posted on the Web site would be those initiated and resolved since February, when the council notified providers that it reserved the right to make the information public.

Click here to access the NYT article.

Ghostbusting

From the New York Times article "Medical Editors Push for Ghostwriting Crackdown":

As Washington tries to revamp the health care system, concerns about ghostwriting are taking on new urgency. One of the underlying assumptions of the health care overhaul effort is that money can be saved and medical care improved by relying more heavily on research showing which drugs and procedures are the most effective. But experts fear that the process could be corrupted if research articles are skewed by the hidden influence of drug or medical device makers.

Click here to access the NYT article.

Scary stuff?

From the New York Times article "Ghostwriting Is Called Rife in Medical Journals":

Six of the top medical journals published a significant number of articles in 2008 that were written by ghostwriters financed by drug companies, according to a study released Thursday by editors of The Journal of the American Medical Association.

Among authors of 630 articles who responded anonymously to an online questionnaire created for the study, 7.8 percent acknowledged contributions to their articles by people whose work should have qualified them to be named as authors on the papers but who were not listed.

Click here to access the NYT article.

Advamed speaks out against proposed $4 billion tax

From the New York Times article:

The future of Senator Max Baucus’s compromise health care proposal is far from certain, but one industry group was quick to fire back on Tuesday. The protest came from makers of medical devices like heart pacemakers and artificial hips – companies that would have to pay hefty new fees under the Baucus plan.

Click here to access the NYT article.

Failure to disclose?

From the dotmednews.com article:

Under intense scrutiny for not revealing a relationship with Medtronic, Dr. David Polly, a well-known spine surgeon, has resigned from the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons Board.
...
In a letter from Grassley to Medtronic, it was suggested that the payments to Polly could be considered a conflict of interest and that updates from Polly were given to Medtronic in violation of a set agreement with the University of Minnesota and might contain false information to the university's ethics committee.

Click here to access.