Wouldn’t you like to look into a Chrystal ball and see the future, apparently telling the future is an art at the Prescription Project
On April 25th, several days in advance of the Report of the AAMC Task Force on Industry Funding of Medical Education the Prescription Project released “Toolkits to Guide Hospitals and Medical Schools with Conflicts of Interest”
The guides follow the same flow as the recommendations coming out of the AAMC taskforce. .
From the titles of the tool kit modules along with the recommendations in the tool kit it appears that they had significant time to digest the AAMC recommendations and take them several steps further to advance their cause (this to be expected).
No wonder the Prescription Project was able to provide insights about the report for the New York Times article Group Urges Ban on Medical Giveaways prior to the public release of the report.
All participants in the taskforce signed an oath not to pre-release copies of the report until it became public.
It is disappointing that the AAMC /or some of their participants provided pre-release copies of the document to groups like the Prescription Project.
The timing is also suspect, the AAMC told several academic physicians and taskforce participants that the report was coming out in mid June. The Prescription Project must have been fully aware of the change in schedule by the AAMC, which suggests some one(s) at the AAMC gave them the heads up. Perhaps their webmaster posted their tool kits on Friday, thinking the AAMC report would be released that day, and made a "mistake".
This type of coordination begs the question what role if any did the Prescription Project and the Institute of Medicine as a Profession have in developing the drafts of the report that were submitted to the taskforce.
If the process is to be open for some, it should be open for all.
I guess for AAMC and Prescription Project transparency goes one way or maybe they don’t believe that tranparency applies to them, they say transparency is not enough, what if it is not at all.
Or perhaps they were just looking into their chrystal ball.