The text of the amendments to Massachusetts Senate Bill 2526 (amendments) became available on Monday, and one of the amendments ( S2650 amendment on pharmaceutical conduct ) to replace the gifts to physicians portion of the bill was worse than before, even though the ammendment takes out the criminal penalties (now $5,000 to each party involved in each infraction) . The definition of gifts is very broad and encompassing.
The devil is in the details, limiting “gifts” that sounds from the face of it like a good idea. The problem comes in how you define gift in this bill ( “Gift", a payment, entertainment, meals, travel, honorarium, subscription, advance, services or anything of value, unless consideration of equal or greater value is received and there is an explicit contract with specific deliverables which are not related to marketing and are restricted to medical or scientific issues).
The words “not related to marketing and are restricted to medical or scientific issues” by leaving out education could mean CME, the words not related to marketing could include “focus groups, consulting, dinner meetings, board fees, stock options including founders stock, promotional events, journal reprints, medical books….. (they have value). Also there is no definition on what is meant by restricted to medical or scientific issues.
For CME it would be calamitous, lets say you are putting a program together and the best speaker in the country lives in Massachusetts, you would have to disqualify them simply because of where they live, or one step further, if you wanted to have the program in Massachusetts, you could fly in speakers from out of state, but not pay an honorarium to your faculty from within the state or perhaps the event itself may be illegal. (Perhaps this violates the first amendment on free speech and the right of the people peaceably to assemble).
The bill if passes as currently written, would be a disaster to the bio-tech industry of Massachusetts, and have devastating effects on the research institutions that make Boston the largest healthcare economy in the country. Relocation would be on the top of the minds of all research faculty, group practices and many of the biotech companies.
We estimate that this bill could disqualify as many as 20% of our faculty, as the ban covers all honorarium and travel, we would have no way to pay speakers from Massachusetts to travel to events, and no way to pay them for their time speaking. If you think about it this includes all doctors from Harvard, Mass General, BU, The Brigham and Women’s, this would limit access to some of the best faculty in the country.
This bill which encompasses all types of reforms, is a priority of the Senate President Therese Murray and time is short to help stop this coming tsunami.
On another note Medical Marketing and Media covered this story today with quotes from Thomas Sullivan and John Kamp.
http://www.mmm-online.com/State-Senate-approves-ban-on-gifts-to-physicians/article/109220/