An outside review appears to indicate that top management at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center violated policies on financial conflicts of interest more than once, according to the New York Times.
Those actions helped create “a culture in which profits appeared to take precedence over research and patient care,” the Times said.
The report’s findings come in the wake of several months during which rumors about the top brass’s connections to drug and health care companies.
The report “It concluded that officials frequently violated or skirted their own policies; that hospital leaders’ ties to companies were likely considered on an ad hoc basis rather than through rigorous vetting; and that researchers were often unaware that some senior executives had financial stakes in the outcomes of their studies,” the Times noted.
The external review was carried out by the law firm Debevoise & Plimpton. Researchers conducting studies were often unaware of the connected financial stakes held by leadership, the report said.
Last week, Memorial Sloan Kettering said it had put in place brand new policies and procedures regarding its employees’ financial relationships with outside companies, ProPublica and the Times reported
The new policy requires “the creation of a board committee to focus on overseeing conflicts,” according to the web site fiercehealthcare.com. It also requires the hospital to disclose financial interests of faculty and researchers on its website.
“MSK previously barred senior executives from serving on the boards’ of for-profit health- or life sciences-related companies. It also blocked MSK board members from investing in or serving as a board member of an MSK spinoff,” the web site reported. “The response comes months after it was revealed multiple executives held financial ties to drug and health care companies. That also prompted the resignation of the chief medical officer of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, José Baselga, M.D., who failed to disclose millions of dollars he was paid by drug and healthcare companies in dozens of research articles published in recent years.”
“The controversial revelations coming out of Memorial Sloan Kettering have also had an impact on other high profile cancer institutions,” suggested endpts.com, “including the Boston-based Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Seattle-based Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center — both of whose executives sit on corporate boards — and are reassessing their norms related to financial ties, according to NYT/ProPublica.”
The publication HealthLeaders told its readers that there are three primary takeaways: first, that “an independent audit concluded that Sloan Kettering officials frequently violated or skirted their own policies.” Second, that the hospital leaders’ ties to companies “were likely considered on an ad hoc basis rather than through vetting.” And third, researchers “were often unaware that some senior executives had financial stakes in the outcomes of their studies.”
