Dec 29th, 2011 | By Daniel Carlat
Those of us who have followed the progress of the implementation of the Physician Payment Sunshine Act have been acutely aware of one potential loophole: drug companies might try to hide payments to doctors for industry-supported CME activities. That’s because these payments are not “direct” payments to doctors, but rather indirect payments. In a 2007
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Nov 14th, 2011 | By Daniel Carlat
For those who have not yet heard, there is a new lobbying group in Washington, the CME Coalition. Their mission is to polish the tarnished image of industry-supported CME, in the hopes, apparently, of fending off any future legislation that would further regulate industry funding of CME. Now, if you read the organization’s mission statement,
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Oct 14th, 2011 | By Kerri Murawski
After requests by one of our jointly sponsored organizations to issue CME credits to their physician faculty members, and not knowing if I was permitted to do so, I began researching the topic. I began my research on the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education’s “Ask” section, “Credit” subsection, of their website. It seemed to
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Oct 12th, 2011 | By Daniel Carlat
Journalist Larry Husten of Cardiobrief.org just posted a fascinating article about conflicts of interest gone wild. An “expert panel” assembled by the National Lipid Association has recently published new recommendations on how to test patients for high lipids. At first glance, everything appeared legit. The authors are noted researchers in the field. The “Journal of
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Sep 22nd, 2011 | By Andrew Holtz, MPH
Normally I would salivate over a workshop titled “Let Me Be Clear: Science Journalism in the Age of the Genome and Twitter“. OK, yes, I admit to being a nerd about both science and journalism. When I received an e-mail about this event, I clicked through right away to learn more. As I read phrases
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