The article's major premises deserve quotation:
When Transparency International was founded in 1993, the focus for fighting corruption was mainly on bribes and corruption of civil servants in developing countries. While our definition of corruption was broad from the beginning, that is abuse of power or of a powerful position for personal advantage or benefit, the concept of preventing corruption had to be adjusted more recently.
conflicts between private and professionally consigned interests—be it in public office or in the private sector—create susceptibility to corruption....
Conflicts of interests are now considered as a major gateway for corruption in medicine and public health.They predominantly affect the way that doctors evaluate and use the products of the pharmaceutical and medical device industry by a systematic and ubiquitous exposure during professional life, starting at medical school.Independent clinical research which can produce reliable results on new drugs or new medical technology has almost vanished and has been progressively replaced by industry-sponsored studies which are dominated by marketing interest of the manufacturers, including misleading selection or extensive falsification of data and results. Consequently, evidence-based guidelines or practice guidance often can no longer be assumed to be unbiased and free of conflicts of interests. Meta-analyses are at risk of being seriously distorted, even after adjusting for publication bias, due to inaccessible, unpublished data on clinical trials or inappropriate, for example non-reproducible, inclusion of such data....
Nowadays, medical expert committees are obliged to disclose conflicts of interests. Nevertheless, rarely is any action taken to control or to exclude advisers or experts with conflicts of interest since the extensive ties to industry of panel members have become the norm. It is therefore illusory to expect that disclosure alone without sanctions will be sufficient to increase transparency and decrease corruption in medicine and public health. Even if adequate sanctions follow, individual professional behaviour may not suffice for reversing the detrimental dependency of the medical and scientific community on industry. By the same token, corporate responsibility endeavours of drug and medical device companies should not remain voluntary efforts without tangible sanctions.
Let me quote below their major recommendations, edited just a bit:
Individual level
Professional codes of conduct for physicians and other health professionals, individual drug and medical device companies, health maintenance organisations, sickness funds, research organisations, etc. The common denominator of such codices consists of the ban of offering/accepting any personal gifts, including food and travel.
Organisational level within the medical system
Codes of conduct for academic medical centres, medical associations, patient and consumer organisations, organisations of healthcare professionals and producers of pharmaceuticals and medical devices. Each institution or organisation in healthcare as well as each professional in these institutions or organisations should be obliged to make any payments, honoraria or other benefits by pharmaceutical or medical device companies transparent.
Public registry of all clinical trials and other research activities involving patients, including post-marketing and pharmacovigilance studies. Publication of all relevant outcomes and results including null results, adverse effects and stopping rules, administrated and monitored by an independent institution such as the National Institutes of Health. Full disclosure of funding agencies, companies and responsible data centres.
Education of healthcare professionals including continuous medical education must be disentangled from commercial interests. The healthcare professional organisations should integrate graduate and continuing medical education in their codes of conduct.
Political level
Drug and medical device approval legislation: necessary prerequisites for starting drug approval process should include a complete and consistent disclosure (including amount) of beneficiaries of involved institutions, experts and organisations.
Implementing an expert anti-corruption agency for health at the national level authorised to take legal action. This includes activities in prosecuting conflicts of interest among health professionals and their institution, since such conflicts often result in rising healthcare expenditures without benefit for the public.
Society level
Monitoring of influence of commercial interests on public health and outcomes of medical interventions: annual reports to the public on health indicators and international comparisons including healthcare expenditures, estimated losses due to corruption and fraud in healthcare and recaptured resources by anti-fraud and anti-corruption measures.
Health Care Renewal readers may find it a useful exercise to compare these recommendations with their local situation. As far as I can tell, here in the US, almost none of these recommendations now obtain. Going through the list:
Individual level - In the US, codes of conduct promulgated by most medical societies do not completely ban accepting gifts. Not all drug and device companies, health maintenance organizations, insurance companies (the equivalent of sickness funds here), and research organizations have visible codes of conduct, and those that exist do not completely ban accepting or giving gifts.
Organizational level - Not all academic medical centers, medical associations, patient and consumer organizations, organizations of health care professionals, and drug and device companies have visible codes of conduct, and those that exist hardly make all payments, honoraria and other benefits completely transparent.
- There is a clinical trials registry. I am not sure if it includes post-marketing and pharmacovigilance trials (readers may be able to help me here). I do not know of any independent institution that monitors in detail the publication of all study results.
- US education, including continuing education of health care professionals is considerably entangled with commercial interests. Codes of conduct relevant to the relationships among industry and education are weak.
Political level - Drug and device regulation does not require complete and consistent disclosure of payments to medical schools, medical centers, and other research organizations which implement relevant research.
- There is nothing resembling an expert anti-corruption agency for health at a national level. Nor do such agencies exist at the US state level.
Society level - There is no systematic ongoing monitoring of commercial influence on public health and outcomes of medical intervention. There are no national reports that cover fraud and corruption and health care.
So as best as I can tell, here in the US, we currently are following almost none of these recommendations.
Maybe in other countries things are a little better. It would be interesting to hear from readers around the globe about this.
As I have repeated again and again, I believe true US health care reform requires improved transparency, and mechanisms to improve integrity and ethics like those suggested by these Transparency International authors.
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