Lucrative consulting payments for disciplined doctors

ProPublica, the non-profit journalism organization, reports that many drug and device makers continue to pay sizable consulting fees to doctors after they have been disciplined for serious professional offenses.  Hundreds of thousands of dollars from companies like Stryker Corp. and Insys have made their way to doctors disciplined for excessive prescription of narcotics, improper sexual relationships with patients, and other serious misconduct. In many cases, the doctors’ licenses had been revoked.

These payments may be legal, but they raise serious questions about improper influence by medical companies over doctors and about the reliance placed by those companies on doctors with questionable credentials, ProPublica suggests.

Full article: Drug and Device Makers Pay Thousands of Docs with Disciplinary Records, by Jessica Huseman, for ProPublica.