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Spun Silly: Academic Medical Center Cancer Treatment Advertising in the Era of Hype and Flim-Flam

Over the weekend, the New York Times <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/19/health/19cancerads.html">reported</a> on how prestigious academic medical centers advertise cancer care.  Here are some examples, Prostate Cancer Surgery at Mount Sinai <blockquote>A print advertisement for prostate cancer surgery at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Manhattan is typical of the way many elite research and teaching hospitals sell hope to the public. 'Our newest prostate specialist, Dr. David Samadi, has pioneered a minimally invasive approach that allows him to retain the highest cancer cure rates with the lowest risk of side effects,' says the ad. Highest cure rates. Lowest risk. What evidence does the medical center have to back up such superlatives? The ad’s claims are based on the successful results of Dr. Samadi’s operations and testimonials from his patients, said Jane Zimmerman, Mount Sinai’s chief marketing officer. </blockquote>However, the article noted that the hospital could provide no studies that showed that its or Dr Samadi's results were superior to those of other hospitals or other surgeons. <blockquote>... the ad with the superlative prostate cancer claims ... was later revised to say that Dr. Samadi’s approach gives 'high rates of success coupled with lowered risks of side effects.' Ms. Zimmerman said Dr. Samadi was not available to be interviewed. </blockquote>Also,the people who concocted the advertisement said it was not really meant to tell prospective patients that the surgeon had better results than all others: <blockquote>But marketing executives defend their approach, saying cancer treatment ads tend to play more heavily on emotion than on medical statistics because the ads are not intended to inform people who already have the disease. They are meant to make an impression on future patients, who may decide on treatments years after they have seen an ad, or to sway influential people who might advise a future patient. 'This isn’t retail advertising,' said Ellis Verdi, president of the DeVito/Verdi Agency in Manhattan. The agency produced the Mount Sinai ad, which ran in The New York Times, and has created cancer ads for other hospital clients. 'This is reputation advertising,' Mr. Verdi said. 'There is a very big difference.' </blockquote> But the advertisement said that the hospital's prostate cancer specialist had the highest survival and lowest adverse event rates.  How would a patient with prostate cancer realize that the advertisement was only meant to enhance the hospital's reputation, but not meant to speak to him?   Radiation for Brain Tumors at Massachusetts General Hospital <blockquote>'We gave Nick something he couldn’t find anywhere else in the Northeast. Life without cancer.' That was the text of a print ad last year by the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center in Boston, promoting its $50 million center for proton beam therapy, a kind of high-energy radiation to treat brain tumors and other cancers. The hospital was the only medical center in the region with a proton therapy center, the ad said, enabling doctors there to successfully treat the brain tumor of a young man named Nick. The ad’s concept was that Nick had a greater chance of survival because the precise proton beam could destroy malignant brain tissue while leaving surrounding healthy brain tissue intact, said Jodie Justofin, the marketing director at Mass General’s cancer center. Dr. Thomas F. DeLaney, the medical director of the Francis H. Burr Proton Therapy Center at Mass General, said he had no involvement in the ad and did not have any information about Nick. </blockquote> However, the article also noted that "no rigorous studies have shown that proton beam therapy has higher brain-cancer cure rates than other treatment methods, said Dr. [John D] Birkmeyer of Michigan [a professor at the University of Michigan and cancer outcomes researcher]. 'The ad might be accurate that they are the only hospital in the Northeast with this particular widget,' he said. 'But it could be misleading that the availability of this particular widget gave this patient better odds of survival.'" Again, the advertisement said that the patient got "life without cancer," something he could not get anywhere else in the Northeast.  How would a patient with a brain tumor realize that the advertisement was merely based on a "concept," rather than scientific evidence that his  or her only hope for "life without cancer" could come from proton beam therapy at the Massachusetts General Hospital? Surgery for Cervical Cancer at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center <blockquote>'Cancer, You said I’d never bear children,' reads the handwritten letter, held out by a pretty, healthy-looking woman, as a toddler peeks from behind the paper. 'My daughter says you’re wrong.' That recent print ad from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan tells the story of Michelle Rogala, a patient with cervical cancer. Ms. Rogala’s hospital in New Jersey could offer her only a hysterectomy, an operation that would have left her unable to have children. Instead, she went to Memorial Sloan-Kettering, where she entered a clinical trial that was studying less invasive surgery. Ms. Rogala now has a little girl named Maddie. Ellen Miller-Sonet, vice president for marketing at Memorial Sloan-Kettering, said consumers seeing the ads realizes that these were individual stories. 'They know that no two people are the same,' she said. </blockquote>However, Ms Rogala told the NY Times, "hers had indeed been a special case. She had early-stage cervical cancer, she said, making her eligible for a novel operation that has now become a standard treatment at the center. After her operation, doctors told her she would need fertility treatments to conceive. But she said she turned out to be one of the few patients in the study who did not need radiation — which can cause fertility problems. She later became pregnant without medical intervention." Again, why "consumers," much less patients with cervical cancer, would realize that the advertisement was just an "individual story," not a promise that the hospital's treatment of cervical cancer would not prevent future pregnancies, was entirely obscure. Summary The three advertisements described in the NY Times article had some features in common. All seemed to promise exceptional results. None were based on clear scientific evidence. All seemed to have been products of marketers and advertising agencies working without input from the physicians who actually provide the treatments they were advertising. All the marketers defended their work by saying that the advertisements did not actually mean what they appeared to mean. My most obvious comment is that hospitals, even the most prestigious teaching hospitals, now seem to be willing to market their services like the used car salespeople seen on late night television.  Such advertisements, of course, are unseemly and undignified coming from such august institutions.  Worse, they seem to promise more than what these or any hospitals can be proved to deliver, and the only defense of the marketers who produced the advertisements were that they did not mean what they seemed to mean. This shows the sad, and ultimately deceptive and unethical effects of turning the leadership of our best medical institutions over to businesspeople with little knowledge or understanding of the values of  health care. It also shows what has happened to health care in an age of hype, scam, sham, spin and flim-flam.  It all seems part of what Frank Rich just <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/20/opinion/20rich.html">wrote</a> about in the NY Times: <blockquote>If there’s been a consistent narrative to this year and every other in this decade, it’s that most of us, Bernanke included, have been so easily bamboozled. The men who played us for suckers, whether at Citigroup or Fannie Mae, at the White House or Ted Haggard’s megachurch, are the real movers and shakers of this century’s history so far. That’s why the obvious person of the year is Tiger Woods. His sham beatific image, questioned by almost no one until it collapsed, is nothing if not the farcical reductio ad absurdum of the decade’s flimflams, from the cancerous (the subprime mortgage) to the inane (balloon boy). What makes the golfing superstar’s tale compelling, after all, is not that he’s another celebrity in trouble or another fallen athletic 'role model' in a decade lousy with them. His scandal has nothing to tell us about race, and nothing new to say about hypocrisy. The conflict between Tiger’s picture-perfect family life and his marathon womanizing is the oldest of morality tales. What’s striking instead is the exceptional, Enron-sized gap between this golfer’s public image as a paragon of businesslike discipline and focus and the maniacally reckless life we now know he led. What’s equally striking, if not shocking, is that the American establishment and news media — all of it, not just golf writers or celebrity tabloids — fell for the Woods myth as hard as any fan and actively helped sustain and enhance it. People wanted to believe what they wanted to believe. Tiger’s off-the-links elusiveness was no more questioned than Enron’s impenetrable balance sheets, with their 'special-purpose entities' named after 'Star Wars' characters. Fortune magazine named Enron as America’s 'most innovative company' six years in a row. In the January issue of Golf Digest, still on the stands, some of the best and most hardheaded writers in America offer 'tips Obama can take from Tiger,' who is typically characterized as so without human frailties that he 'never does anything that would make him look ridiculous.' </blockquote>I would note that the health care precursor to all this was how the former CEO of the Allegheny Health Education and Research Foundation (AHERF), the biggest health care system in Pennsylvania in the 1990s, was hailed as a visionary in the medical press and scholarly literature, which later ignored AHERF's bankruptcy and its former CEOs criminal conviction (see post <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2007/04/that-recent-unpleasantness-fall-of.html">here</a>.)  So my one disagreement with Mr Rich is that the problems are much older than the 21st century. Rich concluded, <blockquote>after a decade of being spun silly, Americans can’t be blamed for being cynical about any leader trying to sell anything. As we say goodbye to the year of Tiger Woods, it is the country, sad to say, that is left mired in a sand trap with no obvious way out. </blockquote> The way out of our sand trap in health care, of course, is to refuse to be spun any more. We need to stop believing the hype propogated by all the clever marketers, and all the self-interested CEOs who hire them. Meanwhile, I would suggest to any cancer patient who failed to get the wonderful results promised by some slick hospital advertisement, there may be some lawyers who with whom you ought to speak.

Spun Silly: Academic Medical Center Cancer Treatment Advertising in the Era of Hype and Flim-Flam

Over the weekend, the New York Times reported on how prestigious academic medical centers advertise cancer care. Here are some examples, P...

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Addressing Drug, Biotechnology, and Device Companies' Payments to Physicians: the Thai National Health Assembly

We have frequently <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/conflicts%20of%20interest">discussed</a> how financial relationships among physicians, other health care professionals, and health care academics, on one hand, and drug, biotechnology, medical device and other health care corporations may have adverse effects on patient care and medical teaching and research.  A first step towards addressing these relationships would be their full disclosure.  Here in the US, Senators Grassley (R-Iowa) and Kohl (D-Wisconsin) have been pushing for a Physician Payments Sunshine Act which would require all such companies to disclose all such payments.  Whether it will become law, as part of health care reform legislation or independently, is now anyone's guess. Since we are based in the US, we tend to discuss such issues from a US viewpoint.  Just to show that these problems are global, and that some countries may have more fruitful approaches to them than others, see a recent article <a href="http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/local/29264/companies-accused-of-pushing-drugs">from the Bangkok Post</a> on the run up to the Thai National Health Assembly: <blockquote>Over-prescription of pills and medicines by doctors under pressure from pharmaceutical companies is being condemned by senior doctors ahead of a national health assembly on the issue this week. In some cases, drug sales representatives were criticised for wearing 'inappropriate outfits' and offering gifts to secure orders. Doctors say they are quite prepared to join any public sector moves to end unethical drug promotion to protect patients and cap soaring national health care costs and irrational drug use. At a forum on ethical criteria for promoting medicines, physician Prasert Palittapongarnpim, of Chiang Rai's Prachanukroh Hospital, said big pharmaceutical firms use many different methods to encourage doctors to prescribe their drugs. They range from small gifts and stationery to lucrative luncheon lectures, seminar sponsorships and overseas trips. Dr Prasert said he was once offered a huge sum of cash by a drug salesperson to change his drug order. Some senior doctors also tell their medical students to buy drugs of smaller dosages so they can increase the size of their orders. </blockquote> At the close of the Assembly, the <a href="http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/local/29549/muzzling-the-drug-giants">Bangkok Post reported</a>: <blockquote>Curbing the influence of pharmaceutical firms on doctors topped the agenda of the three-day National Health Assembly which ended yesterday. A better regulation was needed to govern the promotional activities and the sale of medicine to solve the problem of unnecessary and excess drug prescription by physicians, the annual health forum was told. Unethical sales of drugs were among 11 health-related issues discussed during the second National Health Assembly (NHA2009). Suwit Wibulpolprasert, the assembly's chairman, said the problem of over-prescription was rampant and worrying. There are doctors who only place orders with a firm offering them lucrative inducement packages in return, such as overseas trips and expensive gifts. 'We need to have a regulation which would require these drug firms' sponsorship to doctors to be made public,' said Dr Suwit. He said a group of experts were working on a bill to prevent a conflict of interest between doctors and pharmaceutical companies. When ready, it would be submitted to the national drug system development panel, chaired by the prime minister, for consideration. Dr Suwit has recommended that an independent body be set up to monitor and report the unethical behaviour of doctors and concerned agencies until the enforcement of the new law. </blockquote> One would think that having a <a href="http://nha2009.samatcha.org/?q=en">National Health Assembly</a> would orient health policy more towards the issues concerning people and patients rather than those pushed by health care corporate CEOs (as we discussed <a href="http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/local/29549/muzzling-the-drug-giants">here</a>).  Of course, here in the US, we have nothing that resembles the Thai National Health Assembly.  Maybe if we did, legislation like the Sunshine Act would get a more favorable reception.

Addressing Drug, Biotechnology, and Device Companies' Payments to Physicians: the Thai National Health Assembly

We have frequently discussed how financial relationships among physicians, other health care professionals, and health care academics, on o...

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Arguments for Maintaining the Health IT Status Quo on Defects Nondisclosure Clauses

As I wrote at Healthcare Renewal <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2009/12/web-petition-transparency-and-openness.html">here</a>, I recently posted a web petition "Transparency and Openness in Electronic Patient Records and Other Healthcare Information Technology Systems" at <a href="http://www.webpetitions.com/cgi-bin/print_petition.cgi?99504454" target="_blank">http://www.webpetitions.com/cgi-bin/print_petition.cgi?99504454</a> , calling for an end to Nondisclosure Clauses [of defects, problems, EHR-related adverse events, etc.] in HIT contracts. The petition reads: <blockquote> We, the undersigned, believe in transparency, accuracy, and accountability in scientific research, especially in matters related to healthcare. We believe contractual nondisclosure clauses [1] that prohibit or restrain unfettered disclosure and dissemination of information about healthcare information technology problems related to bugs, design defects, suboptimal user interfaces, other factors that can adversely affect care, and the adverse events and near accidents these problems cause, are unethical. We believe that patients and clinicians have a right to knowledge of healthcare information technology problems and defects that can distract clinicians and/or reduce clinician effectiveness and productivity. We also believe that hospital governance personnel have the fiduciary responsibility as well as obligation under Joint Commission safety standards to protect patients, clinicians and others working within and for their organizations from the potential consequences of healthcare information technology problems [2]. We believe that only through transparency about healthcare information technology can medical ethics be maintained, the rights of patients to the best possible care be protected and medical science advanced. Therefore, we call for such clauses to be refused by governance bodies, vendors of healthcare information technology to refrain from including such clauses in their contracts, and the U.S. Congress to prohibit nondisclosure clauses related to medical devices and healthcare information technology. Furthermore, retaliatory actions against those who in good faith report such matters or incidents should be prohibited. [1] Koppel R, Kreda D. Health Care Information Technology Vendors' "Hold Harmless" Clause: Implications for Patients and Clinicians, JAMA. 2009;301(12):1276-1278. [2] Silverstein S. "Health Care Information Technology, Hospital Responsibilities, and Joint Commission Standards." Letter to the Editor, JAMA. 2009; 302: 382.</blockquote> As I had spelled out many months ago at "Health Care Information Technology Vendors' Hold Harmless and Keep Defects Secret Clauses" <a href="http://www.ischool.drexel.edu/faculty/ssilverstein/failurecases/?loc=cases&sloc=koppel_kreda">here</a>, and in a <a href="http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/extract/302/4/382">July 22, 2009 letter to the editor in JAMA</a> entitled "Health Care Information Technology, Hospital Responsibilities, and Joint Commission Standards", I believe these clauses: <ul><li>Are responsible for stagnation in health IT industry thinking that requires an unrelenting focus on the needs of clinicians and patients;</li></ul><ul><li>Cause hospital executives to violate their fiduciary and Joint Commission safety obligations to patients and staff;</li></ul><ul><li>Perhaps even put clinicians themselves in a conflict of interest with their own professional ethics (that call for widely sharing information about potential risks to patients). </li></ul> The Joint Commission nor any other healthcare regulatory body has done anything about such contract clauses since that time, to the best of my knowledge despite being made aware of these issues by direct email to JC leadership. I've noted few signatures to the petition so far, but have received some feedback and noted other justifications for maintenance of the status quo. The arguments fall into several categories that defend the status quo of HIT defect/problem nondisclosure clauses. The categories of argument include: <ul><li> Legal arguments (or perhaps I should say 'legalistic'): e.g., HIT is not a "medical device", is not regulated, therefore such clauses are nobody's business but the seller and buyer.</li></ul> <ul><li>Semantic arguments (arguing about words): e.g., the Joint Commission safety standards calling for "the organization to communicate information related to safety and quality to those who need it, including staff, licensed independent practitioners, patients, families, and external interested parties" really do not mean communication to other healthcare organizations, regulatory bodies, the press, etc.</li></ul> <ul><li>Corporatist arguments: the clauses are needed to protect the industry and protect "innovation" - however, innovation without adherence to patient's rights and medical ethics is not innovation at all in my mind (cf. the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_syphilis_experiment">Tuskegee Study of Syphilis</a>).</li></ul><ul><li>Statist arguments: e.g., we know what's best for medicine, and even if HIT today does have problems and hurt people, it's for the greater future good that their diffusion should be unimpeded by free dissemination of information on downsides.</li></ul> <ul><li>Logically fallacious or irrational arguments: e.g., the circular argument that there's no reason to prohibit nondisclosure clauses about HIT defects and patient incidents, since these problems do not occur in the first place -- or if they occur patient harm is "always" averted by clinicians.</li></ul> While these type of arguments are interesting and may make for excellent debate, (and medical ethicist George Annas at BU taught his medical students, myself included, well on such issues): none of these arguments are aligned to the ethics, customs and traditions of medicine and the oaths taken by its practitioners. The oaths taken by healthcare IT companies (i.e., to the speculators investing in this technology) leave much to be desired in that regard. On the other hand, here is a sentinel reason for supporting their quick abolishment, a strong informatics-based reason to abolish nondisclosure clauses: As admissions such as "We are unable to share documents [relating to likely problematic EHR's - ed.] as our contract with XXXX includes a confidentiality clause" at <a href="https://exchangeweb.drexel.edu/owa/redir.aspx?C=8b72802e565a46c89aeaba37b9a8ecbd&URL=http%3a%2f%2fwww.computerweekly.com%2fblogs%2ftony_collins%2f2009%2f11%2fclaim-of-censorship-over-cerne.html" target="_blank">http://www.computerweekly.com/blogs/tony_collins/2009/11/claim-of-censorship-over-cerne.html</a> indicate, to the point of rejecting a FOI request for information, there are unknowns in health IT (as Tim the proprietor at <a href="http://www.histalk.com/">Histalk</a> wryly noted, the refusal probably is not on the grounds of having glowing praise to report). How many other data points have not made it to the literature, either peer reviewed or press? Does anyone know definitively? Do we really know that Medical Informatics research therefore represents a valid sampling of the events that transpire when HIT is designed and implemented? A parallel and currently controversial issue in pharma is the deliberate suppression of negative or neutral clinincal trials results, with an emphasis on the positive, to protect a drug candidate or an actual drug in postmarketing surveillance. Does this not potentially taint the science? -- SS

Arguments for Maintaining the Health IT Status Quo on Defects Nondisclosure Clauses

As I wrote at Healthcare Renewal here , I recently posted a web petition " Transparency and Openness in Electronic Patient Records and ...

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With Leaders Like These...

My current favorite book about the global financial meltdown, aka great recession, <a href="http://www.harpercollins.com/books/9780061892486/The_Sellout/index.aspx">The Sellout, by Charles Gasparino</a>, featured vivid portraits of the bad leadership that lead to the collapse.  For example: Richard S Fuld, Jr, former CEO of Lehman Brothers (now bankrupt) - <blockquote>Fuld had become more isolated and arrogant. (p.208) As the firm's leverage increased, Fuld's grip on his management and board grew. He was revered by so many people in his circle of senior advisers that almost no one dared to speak out about the firm's risk and leverate, and almost never to Fuld himself. Everyone else was so scared to be cursed at in public or even fired that they simply kept their mouths shut. Fuld's leadership was more like that of a cult leader than even that of an imperial CEO. (p. 209) </blockquote>Maurice R ("Hank") Greenberg, former CEO of AIG (now bailed out by the US government) - <blockquote>Greenberg had begun the financial products group that sold all those [now discredited] credit default swaps in the late 1980s.... Greenberg had a love-hate relationship with the group and its various leaders. He hated the risks they took and the independence the top people in the group sought. But he loved the profits the financial products group ... produced. Yet Eliot Spitzer, the New York State attorney general and by now Wall Street's most famous enforcer, believed Greenberg ran a company that regularly committed accounting fraud and created fictional profits through a series of sham transactions that had nothing to do with credit default swaps. Greenberg considered these possible transgressions so trivial that he called them 'foot faults,' as in a minor foul in tennis. Greenberg eventually did resign.... (p. 204) [and the financial products unit nearly drove AIG bankrupt] </blockquote> John A Thain, former CEO of Merrill Lynch (bailed out by being forcibly merged into Bank of America under pressure from the US government) <blockquote>Over time, it became difficult to keep track of every statement coming out of Thain's mouth that turned out to be wrong since nearly the moment he had taken over as CEO. (p. 417) Thain was becoming unhinged; during a briefing in one of his finely decordated conference rooms that had been part of the $1.2 million office spending spree, people close to the firm said, he completely lost his compusure when an aide informed him about the size of the [company's] losses. What Thain did isn't clear, but Merrill Lynch had to replace a shattered glass panel that appeared to have been the target of the CEO's rage. (p. 419) </blockquote> - Sanford I Weill, former CEO of Citigroup (bailed out by the US government) <blockquote>But in reality, Will never really ran anything. He was a visionary, to be sure, but one whose vision was so myopically focused on building the empire had lusted for for so long and on its share price that he ignored just about everything else. (p. 144) </blockquote> So here we again have reminders of how bad leadership of major US financial firms lead to the collapse. We had <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2009/12/health-care-bubble-parallels-with.html">discussed </a>a series of such factors and how they obtain in health care, suggesting that health care is undergoing a bubble likely to burst just as badly as did the financial/ housing bubble. However, I supplied these quotes not just to underline this point.  It turns out that Mr Fuld, Mr Greenberg, Mr Thain, and Mr Weill have something in common other than having helped to lead their financial firms toward the brink, something in common with relevance to health care. We recently <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2009/12/98-million-dollar-man.html">discussed</a> the outsize compensation given to the current CEO and other top leaders of one of the country's revered medical centers, New York - Presbyterian Hospital.   I suggested that such "compensation madness" will continue to inflate the health care bubble.  What that post did not discuss was how these leaders got to be so well paid.  Presumably, their compensation was set, or at least acquiesced to by the Board of Trustees of the hospital.  So I thought it might be entertaining to see who is currently on this Board. According to the <a href="http://nyp.org/about/board-trustees.html">medical center web-site</a>, the Board of Trustees as of October, 2009, was quite large (including 88 people by my count).  The web-site lists only names, not biographies, so that who most of the members are was not obvious.  This lack of transparency, which is not uncommon in health care organizations, would make figuring out who all the people ostensibly responsible for the $9.8 million dollary man are quite laborious.  However, I did recognize a few names immediately.  These were Richard S Fuld, Jr, Maurice R Greenberg, John A Thain, and Sanford I Weill.  Thus, the Board of Trustees of New York - Presbyterian Hospital includes four of the most well-known architects of the global financial meltdown.  Thus, is it any wonder why the Board of Trustees was happy paying the CEO of a not-for-profit health care institution at a level comparable to a for-profit corporate CEO?  (And is it any wonder that the Dean of the Faculties of Health Sciences and Medicine, and Executive Vice-President for Health and Biomedical Sciences at Columbia University, one of the two medical schools that provide students, trainees and faculty at New York - Presbyterian Hospital, once admitted that the school's main criterion for faculty success was ability to generate external funds, which he called being a <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2007/04/medical-schools-to-faculty-show-me.html">"taxpayer,"</a> rather than ability to teach, research, or take care of patients?) As we have discussed before, boards of trustees of not-for-profit health care institutions have a primary duty to uphold the institutions' missions.  Thus, one would think such boards would be selected according to their dedication to their missions.  But perhaps, in the grubby real world, there may be more important criteria, possibly such as the size of their donations to the institution.  Furthermore, those likely to donate the most  may be more likely to be richest (and perhaps most in need to making themselves appear philanthropic and public-spirited) than the most fervent upholders of patient care, teaching and research. Maybe giving stewardship of our once proud health care institutuions to people most likely to defend their missions, rather than most likely to donate a lot of money, would result in somewhat poorer institutions which do a better job of patient care, teaching and research.

With Leaders Like These...

My current favorite book about the global financial meltdown, aka great recession, The Sellout , by Charles Gasparino , featured vivid port...

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Teaching Would-be Health Care Leaders About Health Care: Why Is This News?

The Wall Street Journal just published <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704398304574598132733849334.html">a story</a> on a big innovation in the business school curriculum: <blockquote>David Song was in the middle of a two-year executive M.B.A. program at University of Chicago's Booth School of Business in February when he got the idea to create a course to help business people better understand the inner workings of medicine. Dr. Song, chief of plastic surgery at the University of Chicago Medical Center, believes the course may help close the gap between such industries as pharmaceutical and biotech, and the medical community they serve. 'Why not help reveal how things run and how we make decisions, particularly in this time of immense overhaul to the system?' says Dr. Song, who began collaborating with one of his marketing professors, Sanjay Dhar, to put together the course, titled 'Understanding the New Breed of Healthcare Decision Makers'—a five-day $7,650 program slated for May. The program is designed to give participants a look at the administrative workings of an academic medical center, including how doctors make decisions about the way to treat patients, and which devices and products they choose to purchase. Booth, like other business schools, is struggling to keep up enrollment in executive education at a time when companies are pulling back on training budgets. Dr. Song's health-care program is the only new addition to the curriculum for the academic year, says Stephen LaCivita, associate dean of executive education. The program is geared toward professionals who work in areas like pharmaceuticals, medical devices and financial services, who may have a limited understanding of the physicians, nurses and other clinicians who are their customers. Some of the issues addressed in the seminars, which will be taught by medical and business faculty, include: how doctors and hospitals define value; how reimbursement strategies work; and how supply chain, purchasing decisions, patient flow and operations are managed. </blockquote> And here is the course's big feature: <blockquote>As an added bonus, on the second to last day students will change into scrubs and observe a surgery, make rounds with doctors and see how patients are prioritized in the emergency room. 'This is getting a glimpse of what it's like and how we make decisions,' says Dr. Song. </blockquote> Earlier this year we <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2009/08/ny-times-proclaims-anyone-can-run.html">noted</a> a NY Times article which breathlessly promoted management jobs in health care, partially by implying that they were available to those who knew little to nothing about what health care actually entails, with, at most "a little studying up." This new article suggests how little "studying up" may actually be needed.  The fact that a five-day course to teach budding MBAs a little bit about health care is considered a newsworthy business education innovation by the Wall Street Journal certainly suggests that the prevailing business culture allows management of heatlh care organizations by people with almost no knowledge of or experience in actual health care. We noted in August that the NY Times article had the whiff of a bubble about to burst.  Indeed, we just <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2009/12/health-care-bubble-parallels-with.html">noted</a> an article that listed some of the salient characteristics of the recently burst financial/ housing bubble, including "major organizations lead by the clueless."  For that post, we used examples of three leaders of huge financial firms that have now failed (that is, are bankrupt or bailed out) who did not understand the complex derivatives their firms were buying and selling.  In the earlier post, we noted examples of leaders of two big American automobile companies that have now similarly failed who seemed to know little about automobiles.  So here we have would-be leaders in pharmaceutical, medical device and other health care corporations "who may have a limited understanding of the physicians, nurses and other clinicians." This reinforces my thesis that health care is now in a bubble that will soon burst.  It also suggests why health care in the US costs so much, out of proportion to the quality or access provided.  Even setting aside how the business culture in the last 20 years has put short-term revenue and personal enrichment ahead of everything else, why would we expect that health care leadership by people who know little about health care, and care less for its values, would be anything but disastrous?

Teaching Would-be Health Care Leaders About Health Care: Why Is This News?

The Wall Street Journal just published a story on a big innovation in the business school curriculum: David Song was in the middle of a two...

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The Door Revolves: Tufts Medical School Dean Goes Back to Merck

A little news item <a href="http://www.nj.com/business/index.ssf/2009/12/new_jersey_drug_maker_lures_tu.html">in the Newark Star-Ledger</a>: <blockquote>Merck announced the appointment of Michael Rosenblatt as executive vice president and chief medical officer. The appointment, which was announced this morning by the company, is effective immediately. Rosenblatt will be responsible for bringing greater focus to Merck’s global medical activities as well as shaping innovative medical strategies. He will report directly to CEO Richard Clark. Rosenblatt has served as dean of Tufts University Medical School since 2003. Earlier, he was senior vice president for research at Merck Sharp & Dohme Research Laboratories, where he co-led the worldwide development team for Fosamax, Merck’s treatment for osteoporosis. </blockquote> A quick Google tour revealed that while he was Dean, Dr Rosenblatt also served as a <a href="http://www.millenniapartners.com/OurTeam/TeamView.asp?TeamMemberID=63">Scientific Advisor</a> to Boston Millenia Partners, a venture capital firm; a Founder and then <a href="http://www.nuvios.com/founders.htm">Scientific Advisor</a> to Nuvios, which now is known as <a href="http://radiuspharm.com/sab.htm">Radius Pharmaceuticals</a>;  an <a href="http://www.puretechventures.com/content/team.asp?mainPage=team&subPage=advisors">Advisor</a> to Puretech Ventures, which <a href="http://www.puretechventures.com/content/strategy.asp?mainPage=about&subPage=strategy">specializes</a>"in company creation and early-stage investment in novel therapeutics, medical devices, diagnostics, and research technologies"; and a <a href="http://www.shire.com/shire/CorporateInformation/directors.jsp?tn=1&m1=3">Director</a> of <a href="http://www.shire.com/shire/CorporateInformation/index.jsp?tn=1&m1=29">Shire</a>, "one of the world’s leading specialty biopharmaceutical companies." This is a reminder how fuzzy the line has become between medical academics and health care corporations.  Here is an example of someone who alternated his main employment between leadership posts in academic medicine and in the pharmaceutical industry, but while in academia maintained a string of part time commitments to a further variety of biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, and related venture capital firms.  Given all these positions and financial relationships, who knows where his main allegiance was?  I would hope that the Dean of  a medical school would be the primary steward of the academic and clinical missions.  But what kind of stewardship can one expect from someone who came from one lucrative position in the pharmaceutical industry, and was to go back to an even higher level position, and who worked for several biotechnology/ pharmaceutical firms, and venture capital firms on the side? Hat-tip to <a href="http://shearlingsplowed.blogspot.com/2009/12/new-merck-names-new-chief-medical.html">Shearlings Got Plowed blog</a>.

The Door Revolves: Tufts Medical School Dean Goes Back to Merck

A little news item in the Newark Star-Ledger : Merck announced the appointment of Michael Rosenblatt as executive vice president and chief m...

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British Medical Journal Interviews Dr Aubrey Blumsohn

About a year after we started Health Care Renewal, in late 2005, we wrote multiple posts about the complex and unfortunate case of Dr Aubrey Blumsohn's attempts to keep a research project honest.  Our most recent summary of the case was <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2009/09/reappearance-of-ghost-of-seasons-past.html">here</a>.  The case involved suppression and manipulation of research, ghost-writing, institutional conflicts of interest, and attempts to silence a whistle blower. It provides lessons about the downsides of letting commercial firms sponsor and hence control human research designed to evaluate the products or services they sell; and of academic medicine becoming dependent on research money from such firms for such research. The case was just re-capped in some detail on the occaision of an interview of Dr Blumsohn published in the British Medical Journal, just available on-line yesterday.  [Cyer C. Aubrey Blumsohn: academic who took on industry.  Brit Med J 2009; 339:b5293.  Link <a href="http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/339/dec15_1/b5293">here</a>.]  Dr Blumsohn's final words in the interview were: <blockquote>It’s hard to encourage anyone to speak out about poor practice in the current environment. This case sums up what has gone wrong with systems set in place to ensure safety and integrity in scientific medicine. It would help if regulators put as much effort into responding to serious critics and whistleblowers as they do producing glossy brochures and yet more guidance. </blockquote> My hat is off to Dr Blumsohn for his determination to pursue this case, and to the British Medical Journal for getting it into the "main-stream" health care literature. Hat-tip to <a href="http://pharmagossip.blogspot.com/2009/12/dr-aubrey-blumsohn-pharmagossips-person.html">PharmaGossip</a>.

British Medical Journal Interviews Dr Aubrey Blumsohn

About a year after we started Health Care Renewal, in late 2005, we wrote multiple posts about the complex and unfortunate case of Dr Aubrey...

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