Last week was a very busy week at the ACC! But what’s new? In addition to a Hill briefing on realigning payment and quality, the College played a prominent role in the following events:

I spoke on a panel at a CME and Industry Conflicts Forum targeted at senior congressional staff and major medical reporters on conflicts of interest — and how to avoid them while maintaining funding for key activities. My premise followed William Mayo’s sage advice: “The best interest of the patient is the only interest to be considered.” But that shouldn’t mean that industry doesn’t have a responsibility to contribute significantly to education, quality and research. Our job is to make sure such contributions in our purview are managed to be bias-free, science focused, and patient-centered. 

We also discussed conflicts of interest at the AdvaMed (Advanced Medical Technology Association) Med Tech Conference. AdvaMed is about to publish their new professional conflicts policies, which, like PhRMA’s new policy, will prohibit lots of direct gifts to doctors and funding to sham speakers’ bureaus. This will actually be a good thing in my view. It won’t mean an end to CME funding (carefully managed), though.

I also shared the College’s views on reforming the health care system at the National Congress on the Un- and Under-Insured. Our principles were well received, and our Quality First ideas were very much praised by consumer groups there.

Finally, I discussed the physician’s critical role in health system reform with the Kaiser Family Foundation in an interview posted online.

Wow. What a busy week.

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