Healthy Skepticism Library item: 15480

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Publication type: news

Goldstein J.
Harvard-Affiliated Hospitals to Limit Docs’ Industry Ties
The Wall Street Journal Blog 2009 Apr 10
http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2009/04/10/harvard-affiliated-hospitals-to-limit-docs-industry-ties/

Full text:

Just a few days after Johns Hopkins announced a stricter conflict-of-interest policy for its doctors, some big-name Massachusetts hospitals are moving in a similar direction.

Doctors at Partners HealthCare, a system that includes Harvard-affiliated Mass General and Brigham and Women’s hospitals as well as outpatient clinics, will be barred from accepting free meals from drug makers. They will also be prohibited from serving on drug-company “speakers’ bureaus,” where doctors are paid to give talks to other doctors.

Free drug samples, often provided to doctors by drug sales reps during visits to doctors’ offices, won’t be given to or distributed by physicians, though they can still be provided through a hospital pharmacy or another central mechanism. Sales reps won’t be able to visit staff unless they have have “written invitations defining the purpose and terms of visits,” according to a Partners statement on the new policy.

These changes are part of a very large wave sweeping through American medicine. Massachusetts recently banned many industry gifts to doctors and required companies to report many payments to docs. Other states have passed or are considering similar laws and a federal law requiring reporting of payments to doctors is in the works.

Sen. Chuck Grassley has been investigating the industry ties of many doctors, including a high-profile Harvard psychiatrist who is affiliated with Mass General. Companies, including Pfizer, Lilly and Merck, have said they’ll start reporting payments to docs, and some big-name medical centers have also said they’ll make public their financial ties with doctors.