Last year began with the University of Colorado Denver and its affiliated teaching hospitals launching an overhaul of conflict-of-interest policies [1] after ProPublica found that more than a dozen of its faculty members had given paid promotional talks.
"We're going to just have to say we're not going to be involved with these speakers bureaus because they're primarily marketing," Dr. Richard Krugman, vice chancellor for health affairs, said in an interview in January 2011.
A few months later, Stanford University took disciplinary action against five faculty members [2] identified by ProPublica who had taken money to deliver drug company speeches, a violation of university policy.
And by last fall, there were indications that pharmaceutical companies were also reducing the money [3] they spent on doctor speakers.
ProPublica first published its Dollars for Docs database [4] in October 2010 listing payments to doctors from seven drug companies. When we updated it this September [3] -- with data from five additional companies -- spending by some of the firms was down.
via propublica.org