Archive for the ‘Doctors’ Category
Device Companies Post How Much They Paid Orthopedic Surgeons
Major device companies that have been investigated by the government and entered into settlement were required to post how much they paid to orthopedic surgeons for consulting services. Wall Street Journal’s Health Blog posted the links to the company websites disclosing payment sums:
Stryker Consulting Payments (check out Richard Harrison Rothman in Philly)
J&J’s DePuy must have deep pockets because several orthos earned almost 3 million dollars in consulting fees (PDF file)
Biomet (check out Adolph V. Lombardi)
Smith & Nephew (check out Richard Laskin)
Many of these surgeons earned tens of thousands of dollars in consulting fees, but some received hundreds of thousands of dollars, and a few earned over a million (there was one ortho who earned almost 3 million dollars in consulting fees). WSJ blogged about the investigation on September 2007.
British Doc Pisses People Off by Calling Out Fat
Dr. Hamish Meldrum is the head of the British Medical Association and has upset a lot of people because he wants to stop sugar-coating the obesity problem and start some serious prevention. Meldrum’s view is that obesity is not always a “medical” problem, but a behavioral one, and when doctors are too quick a write a prescription for a pill for a patient who should be best helped with dietary modification and behavioral changes around food, this prevents overweight people from taking personal responsibility about their weight problems. Read the rest of this entry »
DTC Advertising: Doctors Still Hate It But Industry Continues to Use It
New England Journal of Medicine recently published a paper looking at “A Decade of Direct-to-Consumer Advertising of Prescription Drugs”, where the study authors looked at pharma company spending on DTC advertising and physician promotion in the past 10 years (1996-2006). The authors also looked at the FDA regulation of drug advertising during this time. While drug companies’ promotional spending went from $11.4 billion (1996) to $29.9 billion (2005) where DTC ad expenditures grew by 330%, this made up “only” 14% of the almost $30 billion in drug companies’ promotional spend.
On the other hand, FDA’s warning letters fell from 142 in 1997 to 21 in 2006. The authors speculate this could either be due to drug companies becoming better behaved and playing by the rules, or due to the FDA being too short-staffed to follow up on all violative behaviors. I’m skeptical whether this reduction in FDA warning letters is mostly due to staff shortage at the FDA given how steep this drop was (142 to 21 per year); while I’d like to think that drug companies are finally being “scared straight” by the various scandals and class action lawsuits in the recent years, I’m also not so much of a pollyanna to believe that no violative behaviors are being produced. Still, it looks like DTC is here to stay, as much as many doctors loathe it with a passion of a thousand suns. Read the rest of this entry »
Updated Heart Attack Treatment Guidelines
This week the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology have published updated treatment guidelines for heart attacks (or, as the journal article titled it, “Update of the Clinical Competence Statement on Cardiac Interventional Procedures”). The entire update is currently available in full from the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC) via this link (technical). According to Reuters Health, which reported on this update, the guidelines focus on identifying patients at risk early and the right treatment. In patients with “low risk”, medication therapy is recommended, and tests of cardiac functions are suggested. In patients with “high risk” intervention including angioplasty is recommended.
Religious Doctors May Not Be Called to Serve the Poor
For many doctors (religious or not), the practice of medicine is more a “job” than a “calling”, even though there may be an undercurrent of “desire to serve”. Ask any job applicant, and you’ll get the typical answer: “I am applying for this job because I want to help people.” Doctors enter medicine for many reasons, one of which may be “to help people”, but this is different from being called specifically to serve a certain group of people. It does bring a reality check for those patients who believe that a doctor’s religious affiliation may have a greater influence on the altruistic motives of that doctor than a doctor who does not claim a religious affiliation. Read the rest of this entry »
