Putting in the Ski Lifts - National Quality Forum Leaders Improve Conflict of Interest Policies in Response to CareFusion Case

The complex case that came to light with reports of a legal settlement by CareFusion of allegations that it paid kickbacks to promote its ChloraPrep product just got even more complex, but now also a bit more hopeful, and hence much more hopeful than most of the cases we discuss..Background As we noted yesterday, the CareFusion settlement seemed routine when it was first briefly reported in the media.  Then Modern Healthcare published a series of articles about its ramifications, the latest appearing today. In summary prior to the latest article,-  the CareFusion settlement for $40.1 million was made in response to allegations that kickbacks were made to promote ChloraPrep, a solution meant for preoperative skin cleaning-  the Department of Justice news release also alleged that payments were made to a corporation called Health Care Concepts to conceal kickbacks made to its owner, Dr Charles Denham-  the implication was that Dr Denham was supposed to influence a standard writing committee run by the National Quality Forum, a well known organization that promotes quality improvement, issues authoritative practice standards, a form of clinical practice guidelines, and has contracts with the US government for quality of care activities-  the draft of the standard written by the committee allegedly included the use of ChloraPrep, although mention of that specific medication was removed in a revisionWe noted that the NQF policy on conflicts of interest for...
Source: Health Care Renewal - Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Tags: conflicts of interest guidelines institutional conflicts of interest National Quality Forum transparency Source Type: blogs