A recent interview with Ray Hutchinson, the associate dean for regulatory affairs at the University of Michigan's Medical School, highlighted potential new ethical guidelines regarding clinical and educational conflict of interest policies that he hopes to adopt by the end of 2010.
According to the article, the University of Michigan and its medical school are planning to hold a series of symposia starting early this year to discuss better guidelines regarding clinical and educational conflict of interest.
Consequently, the article portrays the need for better conflict of interest policies based on a report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which “showed
the policies at most of the nation’s universities relied on their researchers to self disclose any potential financial conflicts of interest from consulting jobs or relationships with drug and device companies.” The article also cited the report for finding that “about 50 percent of institutions don’t require faculty members to disclose how much money or stock they receive from these companies.”
Interview
Dr. Hutchinson noted that the University has an electronic disclosure system so that faulty can “disclose outside employment or outside relationships.” He acknowledged a very high rate of compliance around 98 to 99 percent of faculty use the system. Dr. Hutchinson also noted that "every faculty member is allocated a certain number of days per month, approximately 4 per month, up to 48 per year, to do outside consulting-type work.” After faculty members submit their disclosure report, members of a committee review the conflicts
He also noted that physicians “needs to be better education of what the lay of the land is, what the expectations are” for disclosure policies. Dr. Hutchinson even thought that having an audit system that at least periodically made sure faculty were disclosing was not a bad idea. He noted however, that these policies would still depend on self reporting to some extent. This issue however, will become apparent as more and more companies start posting their own disclosures on who they are paying, he noted. As a result, Dr. Hutchinson noted that the University has begun surveying company sites to see if faculty is listed.
With respect to CME (continuing medical education), Dr. Hutchinson noted that the University is “trying to come up with some guidelines for what you might call clinical conflict of interest.” These guidelines would relate to activities such as speakers’ bureaus, and consultancies or advisory board memberships for faculty in pharmaceutical and other kinds of biomedical companies.
Dr. Hutchinson noted however that several of the faculty at the University of Michigan feels that CME activities, speakers’ bureaus, and consulting are “a useful function because they deliver to the physicians of this area or to the physicians of this state where people come for CME activities they might not otherwise get.” He also noted that supporters believe these activities “are of high educational value,” regardless of the fact that they happen at least in part because of pharmaceutical support.
At the end of his interview, Dr. Hutchinson noted that new guidelines for conflict of interest policies are a “new movement.” Consequently, he emphasized the importance of taking the time to formulate careful conflict of interest policies to avoid throwing the “baby out with the bathwater.” He even asserted that by creating a restrictive system, it would actually “impair health care delivery to patients by virtue of some unforeseen nuance or event that happens.”