Concerned that your doctor's being paid off? What to do
Every year, pharma and medical device companies spend billions paying doctors in speaker fees, meals, gifts and trips. Research shows that payments like these are pervasive, with more than half of doctors in the U.S. accepting an industry payment over the past decade.
If you're worried that these payments are affecting your doctor's medical advice, what can you do?
Some doctors will tell you about their industry payments. Dr. Jonathan Thompson, Cincinnati's third highest paid doctor in industry payments, issues a conflict of interest disclosure form to his patients, according to records obtained by The Enquirer, that allows them to opt out of using equipment developed by Thompson's company in their surgery.
If you have a serious ethical concern about your doctor that you'd like to discuss with someone else, you can contact your hospital's compliance and business ethics department. (Each hospital has its own conflict of interest policy, with some academic hospitals and private practices limiting what physicians can receive from companies, and others going as far as to ban drug reps entirely.)
And if you're worried about your doctor improperly prescribing or dispensing drugs, the State Medical Board of Ohio handles those complaints on its website, med.ohio.gov.
For anyone who's concerned about getting the most accurate medical advice possible, it's always good to seek out a second opinion, said Genevieve Kanter, an economist from USC who researches conflict of interest in medicine. This is especially important for expensive treatments and serious diagnoses.
Dr. Charles Rosen, an orthopedic surgeon from UC Irvine, recommends that patients wait between three to five years before trying out new treatments. That way, you'll have access to more data on long-term complications.
When reading research on a medical device or drug, he recommends seeking out publications like The Spine Journal, which require authors of studies to disclose any industry payment higher than $100. And for studies in other journals, use the Open Payments database to see if the authors have been paid by the manufacturer.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Concerned that your doctor's being paid off? What to do
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