We've been hearing about possible conflicts of interest between doctors and pharmaceutical companies, or between doctors and medical-devicemakers, for a long time now. Cleveland Clinic is taking a huge step forward in resolving the problem, though, by putting a complete disclosure of all doctors' and researchers' ties to drug and devicemakers on their website.
As far as we know, this is the first time that a major medical center has disclosed relationships of its individual doctors. Usually, doctors are encouraged to do it for themselves.
However, there has been increasing pressure as more and more stories come out of conflicts of interest that doctors have hidden. In fact, Cleveland Clinic is probably making such visible efforts to disclose all information as a result of the news media disclosing some of their links several years ago.
To learn more about the disclosures:
- read this New York Times piece