MED adopts no-gifts policy from groups

The Boston University School of Medicine and Boston Medical Center last week set up a strict policy preventing companies from giving gifts to doctors to favor their products.

The conflict-of-interest policy, which BMC Internal Medicine Chairman Dr. David Coleman said has been in the works since last November, ensures physicians do not choose drugs and medical devices based on gifts and personal connections.

"The institution can feel like it's taking a stronger stand to make sure that the education program for students and interns, rather than fellows, are free of commercial bias," Coleman said.

Coleman, who had been drafting the policy for two-and-a-half years, said clinicians also cannot receive free meals on the Medical Campus from pharmaceutical companies.

"Patients can be assured that their doctors at BMC and BU School of Medicine are not making treatment decisions that are distorted by financial conflicts of interest," he said.

Rob Restuccia, the executive director of the Prescription Project, a group dedicated to preventing conflicts of interests in medicine, said the new policy places BU at the top of institutions with conflict-of-interest guidelines.

"Often undisclosed financial relationships have been proven to undermine better patient care, increase costs and diminish people's trust in the medical profession," the BU health services adjunct assistant professor said.

Pharmaceutical companies spend more than $25 billion marketing to physicians each year, he said.

School of Medicine dean and provost Dr. Karen Antman said many pharmaceutical companies began offering extravagant gifts, switching from pens and pads of paper to "travel to resort meetings describing new drugs."

"We see as particularly strong their outright ban on gifts to physicians and the requirement that physicians who participate on the committees that choose which drugs the hospital provides have no financial ties to drug companies," Restuccia said.

Professors and students had already adopted similar practices before the policy was announced, Antman said.

"Our continuing medical education office had also followed their principles," she said. "Nevertheless, we are now on record as having a no-gifts policy on the Medical Campus for all faculty, students and healthcare providers."

Antman and Coleman said the policy is not meant to discourage relationships between medical centers and pharmaceutical companies, but rather to let doctors make decisions based solely on knowledge and experience, and not economics.

"Prohibiting gifts does not mean that the university or the faculty should keep a distance from the pharmaceutical industry," Antman said. "Developing new and better treatments remains an important mission. Thus, we have to encourage research and collaboration but prevent clinical conflicts of interest."