Harvard Medical School has instituted a policy to prevent its 11,000 faculty members from giving promotional talks for drug and medical device makers, the Boston Globe reports. The new rules prohibit medical school professors from accepting personal gifts, travel or meals from the companies, and restrict the amount of money they can earn from consulting or serving as board members.
Faculty will have to report income of more than $5,000 on a school website, and the school will strengthen internal reporting on potential conflicts-of-interest.
Harvard will also try to limit the pharmaceutical industry’s influence through its involvement in continuing education courses and conventions featuring Harvard faculty.
“We’re anxious to be viewed publicly as doing what’s in the best interest of our patients,’’ Dr. Robert Mayer, co-chairman of the committee that wrote the policy, told the Globe. The school wants to “ensure credibility even more than we do today.’’
According to Mayer, the group tried to limit conflicts of interest while preserving collaborations on life-saving research. Faculty members are still allowed to conduct industry-funded research and work on company scientific advisory boards.
In recent years, top medical schools including Harvard have faced intense scrutiny because of relationships between faculty and pharmaceutical companies. Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) investigated several Harvard faculty members who were accused of breaking school and federal conflict-of-interest rules.
“Greater disclosure is a foundation for more accountability,’’ Grassley said in a statement.
It is one thing to disclose, another to be physically prohibited from doing a presentation on behalf of the pharmaceutical industry. It is striking to see Senator Grassley sited on this issue, where he was a key player in the health insurance reform debate, against any changes, when he recieved close to $2 million dollars over the past two years from the insurance industry!
It is time it have a reasonable approach to physician-pharma relationships, none will hurt the very people this misguided policy is trying to protect, patients!
It’s interesting that Harvard Medical School’s own students applied pressure for the adoption of new conflict-of-interest guidelines. I’d love to see the soon-to-be-docs continue their ethics push and demand more medical ethics be taught in med school.
Teaching physician responsibility for reporting physician-colleagues who aren’t fit to practice is a good example. Ethic Soup reports on a new study that has found more than one in three American physicians don’t think it’s their professional obligation to report any colleagues who are significanly impaired — drunk while working, high on drugs, or just plain incompetent — those who are likely to injure patients.
We have a medical system that allows self-regulation by doctors, supposedly with peer-monitoring and reporting. And there are still a number of states which do not require physician-reporting of other physicians and medical personnel. Adherring to a code of silence certainly isn’t in the patients’ best interest — particularly if they’d prefer to live and not be hurt.
Do you believe that your doctor, or the doctors in your organization, would answer the call and report another doctor who is incompetent? Are you willing to find out? ;For more info on the study:
http://www.ethicsoup.com/2010/07/doctors-code-of-silence-many-keep-mum-on-colleagues-incompetence.html
It is funny how the debate about physicians and rational relationship with the pharmaceutical industry always gets distorted with misinformation and made to look like some back alley transaction. There is a medical board in each state that regulates what doctors do. If a physician writes for medication that is not in the best interest of their patient(“due to undo influence of industry”), the medical board should step in and take the appropiate disciplinary action against that physician. When this does not occur, there needs to be greater scrunity of the medical board to understand it’s failure(with todays technology we can look at every script a prescriber writes) when there is an unjustifiable rationale for those prescriptions.
Industry has made numerous mistakes and wrong doings over the years, and most recently they are paying for it. But let’s not confuse the pharma industry with companies that make landmines or with the tobacco industry.
This is excellent news. Professors making half a million a year from Phizer SHOULD have to clearly state it. Harvard moves and all the other schools will follow, good to see there is integrity in the medical education community.