Massachusetts Gift Ban Costing State Medical Jobs

As many expected, the new Massachusetts law designed to prevent pharmaceutical and medical device firms from having undue influence on doctors is “spurring job losses at local companies and research institutions.” While the ban went into effect last July, enforcement activities will not start until this July, after companies file their first yearly reports.

Consequently, companies have been “curtailing sales, marketing and training activities in Massachusetts” in order to comply with the new rules, and “some outside companies are avoiding Massachusetts altogether.”  As an editorial and  recent article in Boston Business Journal  highlighted, the impact of these new laws have resulted in “fewer jobs related to training, medical device sales and clinical trials.” Such a result will certainly hurt the training of future generations of doctors, and numerous patients who rely on their care and continuing medical education.

Dr. Carey Kimmelstiel, a cardiologist at Tufts Medical Center, commented that the new laws put a real “chill on Massachusetts’ doctor’s opportunities to take part in training and clinical research on medical devices.” He has seen firsthand the impact the bill has had in reducing the number of clinical trials, which means less need for research staff.

He also pointed to the fact that Boston cardiologists regularly participate in “a series of trainings that were funded by medical device companies,” however since the new rules, those “have completely stopped.” Such limitations are significant because those trainings were used to “update heart doctors on the newest procedures, and unusual cases,” something extremely important as hundreds of thousands of patients are growing older, and heart disease and related heart ailments continue to grow.

What is even more problematic about losing funding for such training is that “doctors were not even paid to participate, and often didn’t even know which company was funding their training.” This revelation suggests that almost certainly, any doctors attending were doing so altruistically to help their patients.

Dr. Kimmelstiel highlighted one of the problems with the new bans on gifts and money based on the fact that finding a place to provide training is difficult because meeting space is in short supply, which leads to training taking place in restaurants.

Another problem with the new legislation, as Dr. Kimmelstiel himself has experienced, is that medical companies are hiring fewer doctors to sit on medical advisory boards for device firms, “a common way to provide feedback on new devices.” Such a disruption severely impedes progress on research and development for new devices because doctors who use such technology are unable to “discuss potential collaborations on trials” just because they may involve meals.

With regards to legal impacts, one law firm noted that the new law “requires medical device companies to sign an agreement for a doctor to purchase a device before providing training.” The problem with this, is that “hospitals – and not doctors – are” responsible for investing. As a result, companies and doctors now have to create “soft contracts stating a doctor’s desire to purchase the device.”

Consequently, extra steps such as these have forced medical device clients to “not do business in Massachusetts” because of the onerous paperwork.

Additionally, some medical device companies, such as Voisin Consulting, provide funding for out of state pilot programs with a small group of doctors before launching a full-fledged clinical trial. Due to the recent laws in Massachusetts however, the company said it will not offer such programs in the state because it’s “too difficult and too expensive to do all the necessary reporting.”

This impact could also severely hurt the Boston, which is known as the “hotbed of innovation,” because companies are increasingly turning to states like Texas and California for researchers, “where there are no similar regulations.”

In a time in our country when unemployment rates are rising and remaining high, and our economy is still rebounding, losing jobs (especially those in the health sector) is a risk not worth taking—for physicians and patients. We need to be encouraging more research, more trials, and more funding into finding treatments for diseases that creates jobs and infrastructure to help put our economy back together. Ultimately, with still a “significant amount of confusion over the law,” and this recent evidence, perhaps Massachusetts needs to reexamine the law.