Happenings in Beantown
Today’s Boston Globe has two interesting articles. The first deals with conflict of interest with industry and the other MRSA infections.
Partners HealthCare, which includes Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, is implementing a new policy to better regulate the ties that their physicians have with industry. The new rules forbid free lunches but allow for companies to fund educational events with oversight. Participation of physicians in speakers bureaus will also be restricted. The Globe notes that the new policy is not as restrictive as the policy at Stanford, and some critics cited in the article argue that the new policy still allows too much industry influence.
The other article focuses on an outbreak of MRSA infections that involves nearly 40 newborns and mothers over the past several months at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital. The infections were primarily skin and breast infections, and the article implies but doesn’t directly state that the infecting strains were community acquired strains (CA-MRSA) that may have been transmitted in the hospital. The article does point out, however, that in some cases transmission of the organism may have occurred after hospital discharge since the mean incubation period was 12 days post-discharge. Given the increasing prevalence of MRSA in the community, introduction of the organism into hospitals from healthcare workers, visitors, and patients colonized or infected prior to admission poses a very difficult problem for hospitals. The greatest hope we have for controlling this is scrupulous attention to hand hygiene and environmental decontamination.
Of note, Paul Levy, the CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess, wrote about the problem in his blog yesterday. He’s the gold standard when it comes to transparency.
Partners HealthCare, which includes Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, is implementing a new policy to better regulate the ties that their physicians have with industry. The new rules forbid free lunches but allow for companies to fund educational events with oversight. Participation of physicians in speakers bureaus will also be restricted. The Globe notes that the new policy is not as restrictive as the policy at Stanford, and some critics cited in the article argue that the new policy still allows too much industry influence.
The other article focuses on an outbreak of MRSA infections that involves nearly 40 newborns and mothers over the past several months at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital. The infections were primarily skin and breast infections, and the article implies but doesn’t directly state that the infecting strains were community acquired strains (CA-MRSA) that may have been transmitted in the hospital. The article does point out, however, that in some cases transmission of the organism may have occurred after hospital discharge since the mean incubation period was 12 days post-discharge. Given the increasing prevalence of MRSA in the community, introduction of the organism into hospitals from healthcare workers, visitors, and patients colonized or infected prior to admission poses a very difficult problem for hospitals. The greatest hope we have for controlling this is scrupulous attention to hand hygiene and environmental decontamination.
Of note, Paul Levy, the CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess, wrote about the problem in his blog yesterday. He’s the gold standard when it comes to transparency.
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