Healthy Skepticism Library item: 15423

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

Rubenstein S.
Johns Hopkins Bans Free Drug Samples, Gifts from Industry
The Wall Street Journal Blog 2009 Apr 8
http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2009/04/08/johns-hopkins-bans-free-drug-samples-gifts-from-industry/

Full text:

Johns Hopkins is the latest big name in health care to try to restrict doctors’ ties to the drug and device industries. Its new policy “on interaction with industry” bans free drug samples and says doctors can’t participate in consulting gigs in which they’re essentially paid for not doing anything.

The policy, which applies to Hopkins’s medical school, hospitals and clinics, also prohibits gifts, entertainment or food – regardless of value – from drug and medical device companies. It bars drug and device sales reps from patient-care areas, and says they’re only allowed in other areas when invited by doctors or other staff. Donations from industry will have to be given to Hopkins itself rather than individual doctors. You can read the rest of the policy.

“One of the main thrusts of this whole policy is to try to remove the marketing component of academic-industry relations from the equation,” Julie Gottlieb, assistant dean for policy coordination at the medical school, tells the Health Blog.

For instance, Gottlieb says Hopkins is banning free samples so that no “sense of reciprocity” is built between sales reps and doctors. The broad concern, she says, is that samples drive doctors to prescribe higher-cost drugs, and don’t necessarily get to needy patients. Hopkins decided to ban them altogether rather than go the route of allowing samples to be given to a central location from which they’re distributed. There will be some exceptions, such as allowing use of samples without a company names on them to teach patients how to use inhalers.

As for consulting relationships, the policy says that paid gigs “without commensurate associated duties are considered gifts and are prohibited.” Gottlieb tells us that part makes existing policy more explicit. Hopkins doesn’t believe it has a problem with what Gottlieb dubbed “sham” consulting arrangements, but they’ve been a subject of concern around the country, she says.