Patient or Corporate Advocacy Organizations? - New Studies Shed Some Light

This study analyzed public records (US Internal Revenue Service form 990 tax reports, annual reports and website) on the largest US based patient advocacy organizations, that is, those with revenues of at least $7.5 million.  Its goal was to determine how well these organizations disclose conflicts of interests, and how they have COIs, and what policies they have to mitigate their effects.Its main results were that:-Disclosure was modest.  88% of organizations disclosed their donors, 52% disclosed approximate amounts of donations, but only 5% disclosed exact amounts.  74% provided some information about the employment of their board members.-COIs were common.  83% got funding from drug, device, or biotechnology companies.  Of the 57% of organizations that disclosed any information about the amount of funding, 39% received at least $1 million a year.   Furthermore, at least 39% of the companies had at least one current or former drug, device, or biotechnology executive on their own board of directs.-Policies governing conflicts of interest were infrequent and weak.  Only 26% had publicly available COI policies, and and only 12% of these policies addressed the organizations ' instutional conflicts of interest.Rose SL et al. Patient Advocacy Organizations, Industry Funding, and Conflicts of Interest(2)This study, published online on January 17, 2017, surveyed " a nationally representative sample of 439 PAO [public advocacy organizations ' ...
Source: Health Care Renewal - Category: Health Management Tags: conflicts of interest deception health care corruption institutional conflicts of interest patient advocacy groups Source Type: blogs