Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Companies Keep Paying Doctors As Experts, Even If They Have Been Disciplined For Misconduct
Pharmaceutical and medical device companies are continuing to pay doctors as promotional speakers and expert advisers even after they’ve been disciplined for serious misconduct, according to an analysis by ProPublica. One such company is medical device maker Stryker Corp. In June 2015, New York’s Board for Professional Medical Conduct accused orthopedic surgeon Alexios Apazidis of improperly prescribing pain medications to 28 of his patients. The board fined him $50,000 and placed him on three years’ probation, requiring that a monitor keep an eye on his practice. Despite this, Stryker paid Apazidis more than $14,000 in consulting fees, plus travel expenses, in the last half of 2015. (Huseman, 8/23)
In other news, hospitals are beginning to pay attention to the well-being of medical residents, hospitalists are gaining momentum and nurses have insights into the development of medical devices --
Even those who are not doctors know the long, stressful hours physicians in training work during their intern and residency years. While there have been a number of studies on how those long hours affect patients, there's been a push recently to investigate how the shifts affect the well-being of the medical residents. (Paiste, 8/24)
A hospitalist is a doctor who focuses on work in the hospital, caring for patients and navigating an increasingly complex medical institution. Rather than focusing on an organ or a disease, the work revolves around the physical setting of care. Although hospitalists have been around in one form or another for years, the term "hospitalist" was coined in 1996 by Dr. Robert Wachter, chairman of the department of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco, who has taken a lead in developing and promoting this evolving and growing specialty. (Sadick, 8/23)
Anna Young is the CEO of MakerHealth and co-founder of MakerNurse, organizations dedicated to the idea that the most apt tools for treating patients are sometimes developed on the front lines, by those who work directly with patients. For generations nurses have been raiding hospital supply closets, modifying and repurposing standard equipment to better suit the needs of patients, Young says in a recently released TEDMED presentation. (McClurg and Brooks, 8/23)
