Conflicts of interest are a perennial problem across all of medicine, but the solutions tend to be silos – one set of rules in Stark II, another standard in biomedical research, a third in medical journals, a fourth in teaching. Drug companies are treated differently than device companies; pediatricians more strictly than surgeons; Medicare makes some P4P plans a potential felony. Sometimes these distinctions make sense, but generally not. It is time to think about “COI best practices” across medicine.
Is there a conference for that? Funny you should ask, because on October 27-28, the American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics (ASLME) will co-sponsor the upcoming “Conflicts of Interest in the Practice of Medicine: A National Symposium.” Click here to view the conference agenda. Online registration here. Special preview of the event brochure, click here.
Disclosure: I’m on the ASLME board; conference papers may be published in the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, where I serve as EIC; and the conference is generously funded by a grant from the Highmark Foundation of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with additional funding contributed by the Jewish Healthcare Foundation, the University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health Sciences, and by the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. Funders had no role in the selection of topics or speakers.
