Med School to Ban All Industry Gifts
October 21st, 2008 laurie
University of Minnesota Medical School is considering a new conflict-of-interest policy so strict that doctors wouldn’t even be able to accept Post-it Notes bearing a drug company’s logo, the Star Tribune reports. The far-reaching policy, which if enacted would be among the toughest in the nation, comes as congressional investigators and the U.S. Justice Department are probing ties between doctors and drug companies and medical device manufacturers — probes that have raised some difficult questions for the university.
This decision comes at a time when ties between the medical device industry and doctors are being scrutinized for putting the lives of patients at risk.
The Wall Street Journal reported last month on complications associated with off-label use of Medtronic’s Infuse Bone Graft, including cases where it has caused dangerous swelling in the neck. Infuse is a manufactured version of a naturally-occurring protein that promotes bone growth. It is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for use in the lower back, but surgeons say it is used widely off-label in other parts of the spine.
Doctors with financial ties to Medtronic have been among those promoting the off-label use of Infuse. Former employees have alleged the company induced doctors to use Infuse and other spine products by sending them on lavish trips to resorts, paying them undeserved royalties, and handing out lucrative consulting contracts that required little work. Patients have become life-threateningly ill, and doctors are being sued.
The Star Tribune reports the Medical School’s proposed policy digs deep and reaches far into the entrenched relationship between the drug and medical device industries and the university’s doctors, researchers and students, as well as the institution itself. If adopted, the policy would profoundly alter the relationship between industry and the state’s largest medical school. All personal gifts from industry would be banned. Free drug samples would be limited. Industry support for doctors’ continuing medical education would be phased out. Doctors’ consulting relationships would be disclosed to both patients and the public. Those financial ties would be monitored far more closely.
“It’s really putting policies in place that would, as best as possible, ensure the patient’s best interest,” said Dr. Leo Furcht, co-chairman of the task force recommending the rules and chairman of the U’s Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology.
