Pharma payments to doctors stay behind closed doors ... for now

Pharma payments to doctors stay behind closed doors ... for now: "Patients will remain in the dark about whether their treating doctors receive payments from pharmaceutical companies that could influence prescribing habits, after a bill aimed at increasing transparency ground to a halt on Monday. The payments may be indirect (though conference sponsorship or funds to travel to or attend conferences) or direct (though consultation fees).

The Senate Finance and Public Administration Legislation Committee rejected the bill, agreeing with government, industry and the Australian Medical Association (AMA) that self-regulation is the preferred approach."

why do processes intended to prevent or reduce bias fail? Why we can’t trust clinical guidelines?

“On 13 April 1990, in an unprecedented action, the US National Institutes of Health faxed a letter to every physician in the US on how to correctly prescribe a breakthrough treatment for acute spinal cord injury. Many neurosurgeons were sceptical of the evidence that lay behind the new recommendation to give high dose steroids, yet when two respected organisations released a review and a guideline recommending the treatment, they felt obliged to give it. Now, over two decades later, new guidelines warn against the serious harms of high dose steroids. This case and others like it point to the ethical difficulties that doctors face when biased guidelines are promoted and raise the question: why do processes intended to prevent or reduce bias fail?"

http://www.bmj.com/content/346/bmj.f3830

http://ehln.org/?p=29917#sthash.93DXaLjH.dpbs

Surgery death rate 'twice as high as thought'

Twice as many people die after surgery in NHS hospitals as previously thought, according to a new report that finds serious shortcomings in the way many patients are treated.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9556035/Surgery-death-rate-twice-as-high-as-thought.html