Business Ethics news and information

The CMS recently released its rules on the Physician Payments Sunshine Act, which calls for increased transparency on the financial relationships between physicians and drug and device manufacturers, while a new report provides some light on why such legislation may have been needed.
FULL STORY »

Big insurance companies are opening their own doctors' offices and clinics—a strategy that has previously met with mixed results.
FULL STORY »

Abbott Laboratories has instructed its sales representatives in India not to give gifts to doctors—a practice that has been used as a bargaining chip by companies wanting a piece of the country's burgeoning healthcare market.
FULL STORY »

Sales representatives for Abbott Laboratories' Indian subsidiaries know what it takes to get a doctor to prescribe the drugs they market: a coffee maker, perhaps, or some cookware, or maybe a vacuum cleaner.
FULL STORY »

Oklahoma State University Medical Center is terminating its management agreement with St. John Health System.
FULL STORY »

The Food and Drug Administration's parent agency told a government contractor that 80,000 pages of confidential employee communications that the company posted on the Internet contained no sensitive or personally identifiable information, documents show.
FULL STORY »

HHS' inspector general's office says the CMS needs to do a better job vetting conflicts of interest among the private contractors that are hired to audit Medicare bills.
FULL STORY »

German doctors working for the National Health Service who accept favors, gifts and even trips from drug companies worth as much as 10,000 euros cannot be charged with corruption, according to a landmark ruling on Friday by a top German court.
FULL STORY »

Raghuveer Nayak, a figure in the U.S. Senate seat scandal that helped bring down former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, was arrested at his suburban Chicago home this morning and charged with paying bribes and kickbacks to doctors for sending patients to his string of surgery centers.
FULL STORY »

Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) are continuing to press the CMS on the implementation of the Physician Payments Sunshine Act.
FULL STORY »