Faculty still paid by drug firms | Philadelphia Inquirer

Officials at the University of Pennsylvania believed they had a strong tool to prevent pharmaceutical-company money from corrupting the medical faculty.

In 2006, they acted to keep drug marketers out of their hospital and clinics, to ensure that treatment decisions were made for the right reasons. In one of the country's first policies of its kind, Penn also told its physicians that they "should not participate in industry marketing activities."

Penn's chief medical officer, P.J. Brennan, said he thought the policy was clear: Company-paid lectures are forbidden. "It flies in the face of what a professional ought to be," he said.

But an investigation by ProPublica found that 20 of Penn's doctors have delivered such lectures since 2009. Five, including one who left Penn last month, were paid more than $40,000.

Told of the findings, Brennan said Penn needs to make its policy more explicit.

He was not the only school official caught off-guard. ProPublica checked on 12 medical schools and teaching hospitals and found that faculty at half also lectured for drug firms in the last two years, despite restrictions on such speeches. Among them, Stanford University, the University of Pittsburgh, and the University of Colorado Denver have initiated reviews.

via philly.com

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