UC Medical Schools Win Praise for Conflict-of-Interest Rules
Medical schools at UC-Davis, UCLA and UC-San Francisco accounted for three of the seven U.S. medical schools receiving A ratings for the conflict of interest policies in a new report by the American Medical Student Association, the San Francisco Chronicle reports (Tansey, San Francisco Chronicle, 6/4).
In November 2007, AMSA asked 150 medical schools to submit their conflict-of-interest policies relating to pharmaceutical companies. Two evaluators then reviewed the policies and issued grades.
AMSA plans to update the grades regularly on AMSAscorecard.org (Harris, New York Times, 6/3).
Medical schools at Stanford University and UC-Irvine received B grades (San Francisco Chronicle, 6/4). Twelve other medical schools nationwide received B's.
Fifteen schools that submitted their policies received grades of F. The 16 medical schools that declined to submit their conflict-of-interest policies and the 29 schools that did not respond to four requests for their policies also received grades of F, according to the report.
The report also said that 28 medical schools currently are employing efforts to revise their conflict-of-interest policies (New York Times, 6/3).
The Keck School of Medicine at USC received an incomplete on the score card because new conflict-of-interest policies are under consideration (San Francisco Chronicle, 6/4).