Group says all gifts should be banned
While many health care providers wrangle with exactly how to monitor and restrict gifts from vendors, an influential college association has come up with a direct solution: Ban all drug and medical device companies from offering free food, gifts, travel and ghost-writing services to doctors, staff members and students in all 129 of the nation's medical colleges.
The proposed ban is the result of a two-year effort by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) in Washington, DC, to create a model policy governing interactions between the schools and industry. The AAMC still must determine whether to fully endorse the ban. The ban would not be mandatory, but most schools follow the AAMC's recommendations.
In announcing the proposed ban, the AAMC noted that drug companies spend billions on freebies for doctors, even more than they spend on research or consumer advertising. Medical schools are hot targets because they have influential professors and financially strapped, impressionable, young doctors.
Pharmaceutical companies and device manufacturers routinely offer free food and gifts, but they also arrange lucrative consulting arrangements and ghostwriting services for professors.
Such forms of industry involvement tend to establish reciprocal relationships that can inject bias, distort decision making and create the perception among colleagues, students, trainees, and the public that practitioners are being 'bought' or 'bribed' by industry," the report said. In addition to the gift, food, and travel bans, the report recommended that medical schools should "strongly discourage participation by their faculty in industry-sponsored speakers' bureaus," in which doctors are paid to promote drug and device benefits.
The AAMC recommended that schools establish systems for accepting free drug samples or "alternative ways to manage pharmaceutical sample distribution that do not carry the risks to professionalism with which current practices are associated." Schools also should audit independently accredited medical education seminars given by faculty "for the presence of inappropriate influence," the report said. The AAMC said the rules should apply to faculty even when off-duty or away from school.
While many health care providers wrangle with exactly how to monitor and restrict gifts from vendors, an influential college association has come up with a direct solution: Ban all drug and medical device companies from offering free food, gifts, travel and ghost-writing services to doctors, staff members and students in all 129 of the nation's medical colleges.You have reached your article limit for the month. Subscribe now to access this article plus other member-only content.
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