Tom Sullivan, founder of Rockpointe, Inc., has written an excellent piece on the grossly misguided policies that continue to restrict physician collaboration with industry:
As the number of restrictions on physicians working with industry continue to grow, and the places where policies prohibit physicians from collaborating with industry expand, close examination of the reasons supporting these policies is necessary.
The current trend of academic medical centers (AMCs), professional organizations, and States that have begun adopting policies that restrict permissible interactions and activities between industry and physicians dawned shortly after a set of recommendations proposed by Brennan and colleagues in 2006. Examples of the proposed policies placed restrictions on faculty, residents, students, and staff, which prohibited gifts, samples, and several other activities.
One of the main reasons AMCs began to adopt these policies was an attempt to avoid financial conflicts of interest that compromise core values of altruism and fiduciary relationships. In their view, profit motives and financial gains unavoidably introduce bias in medical decision-making and violate public trust. However, there is number of reasons why the adoption of such policies by AMCs is problematic.
Accordingly, a recent editorial by Don K. Nakayama, M.D., M.B.A. Chairman of Department of Surgery at Mercer University School of Medicine, In Defense of Industry-Physician Relationships in the American Surgeon, identified the misperceptions and myths that have led some AMCs and organizations to adopt such restrictive policies on industry interactions. In his editorial, Dr. Nakayama comes to the “defense of industry-physician relationships” by examining the economic, ethical, and legal foundations for conflict of interest restrictions between physicians and pharmaceutical and medical device industries (“industry”).
