Oct 14 2011
The federal government has not yet written guidelines that would help address this problem even though the rules were mandated as part of the health law.
NPR's SHOTS blog: Financial Conflicts 'Pervasive' On Key Medical Panels
Financial conflicts abound on medical panels that set practice guidelines. ... Researchers found conflicts of interest were prevalent among experts who served on 14 U.S. and Canadian panels that came up with guidelines for the treatment of diabetes and high cholesterol between 2000 and 2010. All told, 52 percent (or 150 of 288 people) had financial conflicts of interest (Hensley, 10/12).
ProPublica: Government Misses Deadline for Rules Forcing Disclosure of Industry Payments to Doctors
The federal government has yet to write rules -; mandated as part of last year's health-care law -; that would force drug and medical-device companies to disclose their gifts, fees and payments to doctors. Last year's Affordable Care Act required that disclosure rules be drafted "not later than October 1, 2011." ... The payment-disclosure rules, once finally implemented, will offer the first complete picture of what's likely to be billions of industry dollars flowing to doctors each year (Wang, 10/12).
 This article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
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