Making the grade: Hopkins Hospital to increase pharmaceutical disclosure
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The Scorecard, issued annually by the American Medical Student Association (AMSA) analyzes several factors of teaching hospital conflict of interest policy, including the extent to which institutions disclose gifts received from pharmaceutical companies and industry relationships.
According to a hospital press release, the administration takes the survey results seriously and intends to improve its performance in the future.
"The new policies - awaiting votes this spring by the Advisory Board of the Medical Faculty and other groups - are likely to eliminate all gifts and free food from industry,
strengthen existing limits on access to Hopkins by industry sales representatives and impose clearer standards regulating noncredit-awarding educational programs if they involve industry funding," the release said.
The new policies would require that funding be approved at the institutional, rather than the individual level. It would also eliminate the acceptance of free drug samples from industry representatives within a year, the release announced.
The new regulations would also require faculty members to disclose any consulting relationships that they might have with pharmaceutical or biomedical device companies.
A bill reintroduced in the Senate this January, known as the Physician Payments Sunshine Act, would mandate that any pharmaceutical companies or medical device manufacturers disclose payments to physicians greater than $100, excluding drug samples.
If passed, companies that knowingly fail to disclose such information would be subject to fines of up to one million dollars. The disclosure information would be available on a public website no later than September 2011.
According to data originally published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2007, the pharmaceutical industry spends nearly $30 billion annually on marketing, the majority of which goes toward direct marketing to physicians.
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