Senators probe industry funding of TCT presenters
This article was originally published in The Gray Sheet
Executive Summary
Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, and Herb Kohl, D-Wis., chair of the Senate Special Committee on Aging, are investigating financial ties between various device firms, physicians from Columbia University and the Cardiovascular Research Foundation, relating to research that was presented at this year's Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics conference in Washington, D.C. Grassley and Kohl, sponsors of the Physician Payments Sunshine Act (S.2029) in the Senate, sent a letter to Columbia University asking for information by Oct. 30 about outside income that teaching physicians participating in TCT have received from Abbott, Medtronic, Medinol, Boston Scientific and Johnson & Johnson. CRF said Oct. 16 that it "welcomes the inquiry from Senators Kohl and Grassley and intends to comply fully with their request for information about CRF's research and educational activities and funding sources." S. 2029 would require medical device and pharmaceutical firms to publicly disclose payments they make to physicians on an Internet database ("1The Gray Sheet" May 26, 2008, p. 14)
You may also be interested in...
AdvaMed Code Of Ethics Make-Over: More Restrictions, More Guidance
AdvaMed's updated industry "code" for interacting with health care professionals forbids device firms to provide entertainment, recreation and non-educational gifts of any value, including pens, mugs and notepads
Guidelines Proposed For Live-Case Demonstrations
Prominent interventional cardiologists plan to create guidelines for live case demonstrations that are broadcast at professional meetings in the face of intensifying scrutiny on the practice
Sens. Grassley, Kohl Retool Physician Payment Bill To Defuse Opposition
Senate lawmakers redrafted pending legislation that would require device and drug companies to publicly disclose financial relationships with doctors in response to steady lobbying by industry