In the latest effort to break up the often cozy relationship between doctors and the medical industry, the University of Michigan Medical School has become the first to decide that it will no longer take any money from drug and device makers to pay for coursework doctors need to renew their medical licenses.

University officials voted to eliminate commercial financing, beginning in January, for post-graduate medical education, a practice that has come under increasing scrutiny from academics, medical associations, ethicists and lawmakers because of the potential to promote products over patient interests.

Dr. James O. Woolliscroft, dean of U-M’s medical school, said leading faculty members “wanted education to be free from bias, to be based on the best evidence and a balanced view of the topic under discussion.”

While the financing in question amounts to as much as $1 million a year at U-M, commercial payments for industry speakers and courses nationwide come to about $1 billion, nearly half the total expenditure for such courses.

Groups fight publicly

The debate over whether the medical profession should develop an industry-free model of post-graduate education is fraught. A conference at Georgetown University on Friday, called “Prescription for Conflict,” will highlight the arguments on both sides through presentations by federal health officials, professors from leading medical schools, hospital executives and a Senate investigator.

Already this year, the debate has led to public squabbles as physicians’ groups have squared off over proposals for new restrictions on industry involvement in the courses known as Continuing Medical Education.

The decision was met with howls of dissent this month from some doctors, including the director of the National Institutes of Health and the president of the American Heart Association, who said it would unfairly cut physicians off from scientific knowledge.

Some seek more restrictions

On the other side of the argument, a leading medical ethicist asserted that the prohibition did not go far enough. Dr. Bernard Lo, lead author of a 2008 Institute of Medicine report on conflicts of interest, said private doctors and academic physicians who are paid to speak for drug companies should be barred from presenting educational material at accredited conferences.

Private medical education companies, which receive money from drug makers to produce such courses, and some physicians who lead the courses, disagree that industry financing or speakers lead to bias. They say that company-financed programs provide a vital service, keeping doctors up to date on the latest and most effective treatments.

“We present what we think is the state-of-the-art of the management of the disease,” said Dr. Rafael Fonseca, deputy director of the Mayo Clinic Cancer Center in Scottsdale, Ariz., who gives 20 to 30 such courses a year. “The accusation that there is bias is not substantiated.”

Continuing medical education has become a big business in the United States, with more than 700 accredited providers. Total spending on such courses peaked at $2.5 billion in 2007, according to the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education, a nonprofit regulatory group.

Via: detnews.com