National Physicians Alliance: 'Un-Branded' Doctors

http://npalliance.org/press/press-releases/modest-means-modest/

Health Care For All, MASSPIRG, AARP Massachusetts, National PhysiciansAlliance, American Medical Student Association And Community Catalyst Urge DPHTo Protect Patients, Amend Drug Marketing Regulations And Conform To Law

Press Release: October 19, 2012

Leading consumer, health care, senior and community advocates voiced strong opposition to emergency regulations weakening the state’s prescription and medical device marketing law at today’s Department of Public Health hearing.

The regulations implement a law passed last summer to relax state restrictions on meals provided by pharmaceutical and medical device companies to doctors and other prescribers. Under the previous law, meals may not be provided unless in a clinical setting. The amended statute permits “modest meals and refreshments” to be offered at educational programs outside of a health care setting, such as a restaurant.

Representatives of numerous advocacy groups testified in favor of improving the emergency regulations. The rules ignored the legislative direction to limit permitted meals to those considered modest, and instead defined “modest” as “similar to what a health care practitioner might purchase when dining at his or her own expense.”

“We urge the Department to comply with the directive given in the amended statute and define ‘modest meals and refreshments’ in clear, concrete and enforceable terms. Alcohol should be expressly prohibited, as alcohol is contraindicated for educating doctors about drugs and treatments that affect their patients’ health,” said Amy Whitcomb Slemmer, Executive Director of Health Care For All. “If the proposed regulations are not significantly strengthened, we will inevitably go back to the days of pharmaceutical and device sales representatives inappropriately wining and dining our doctors.”

“The bottom line is that drug companies wine and dine doctors and other prescribers to sell their newest, most profitable brand name drugs, not to provide unbiased academic information on medical care,” testified Deirdre Cummings, MASSPIRG’s legislative director. “While the whole practice ought to be eliminated, at the very least, the regulations should accurately reflect the law. Free meals provided by the drug industry to physicians must truly be modest, and in an environment conducive to learning.”

“We urge DPH to establish a concrete monetary limit to define the term ‘modest,’ and we felt strongly that these meals should exclude alcohol. Instead, the proposed regulations have no monetary restriction, and permit the provision of alcohol,” Cummings added

“The medical profession prides itself on putting patients first. By not setting a clear dollar limit in its definition of ‘modest meals and refreshments,’ the Department of Public Health compromises our profession’s integrity,” said David Tian, a fourth-year Harvard Medical School student and national chair of the American Medical Student Association (AMSA) PharmFree campaign. “Patients deserve to know that their doctors’ prescribing choices are determined by the best scientific evidence, not which company promised the fanciest meal to lure prescribers into a one-sided presentation.”

As a result of the new regulations, drug companies are currently free to ply doctors with lavish multi-course meals and drinks, paid for by pharmaceutical industry marketing budgets, and ultimately tacked on to the price of prescriptions.

“AARP believes relationships between drug companies and doctors should be transparent and free from conflicts of interest,” said Jessica Costantino, advocacy director of AARP Massachusetts, which serves more than 800,000 members age 50 and older in the commonwealth. “The decision by the Public Health Council to approve regulations that further weaken the state’s Prescription Drug Gift Ban Law, ultimately puts the best interest of patients at risk.”

“Massachusetts is in danger of plummeting below its former place as a national leader in protecting patients from pharma marketing practices that interfere with trust between patients and their health care providers. The regulations also ignore the intent of the legislature by scrapping required disclosures to the state of industry payments to nurse practitioners and physicians assistants, which will not be required under the new federal transparency law that covers physicians.” says Marcia Hams, Director of Prescription Access and Quality at Community Catalyst. “These prescribers are increasingly the target of industry marketing now that they are critical to meeting primary care needs in the state.”

“I just want the best for my patients, and protecting the patient-physician relationship should be the focus of industry-oriented legislation, which the current gift ban regulations fail to do”, said Dr. Constance Liu, OB/Gyn department at Boston Medical Center and Boston leader of the National Physicians Alliance.

Following the hearing, the Department of Public Health plans to review testimony and issue permanent rules in November.

http://npalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/NPA_2012_Current_Program1.pdf

agenda November 11, 2012

NPA Annual Conference 

National Physicians Alliance

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

National Physicians Alliance
Motto	Service, Integrity and Advocacy
Formation	2005
Type	501c(3)
Headquarters	Washington DC
Location	United States
Membership	20,000 physicians
President	Valerie Arkoosh, MD, MPH
Key people	Jean Silver-Isenstadt, MD, PhD
Website	npalliance.org

The National Physicians Alliance (NPA) is a national, multi-specialty medical organization founded in 2005 by former leaders of the American Medical Student Association. The organization's mission statement reads: "The National Physicians Alliance creates research and education programs that promote active engagement of physicians with their communities to achieve high quality, affordable health care for all. The NPA offers a professional home to physicians across medical specialties who share a commitment to professional integrity and health justice."

The NPA was founded as an alternative to traditional trade associations that operate in a guild tradition, primarily serving the economic interests of physicians rather than advocating first and foremost on behalf of patients and public health. The NPA does not accept funding from pharmaceutical or medical device companies.

A 501c(3) organization based in Washington DC, the NPA has a membership of approximately 20,000 physicians. Members must have graduated with an MD or DO degree from a professional school accredited by the LCME or the AOA-COCA; or hold a license to practice medicine within the United States.

UDI's will reduce patient harm

http://www.dotmed.com/news/story/19856?p_begin=0

GPOs want newmedical device labeling faster, medical device companies ask for more time

November 09, 2012

by Brendon Nafziger , DOTmed News Associate Editor (FiDA highlight)

Group purchasing organizations want the Food and Drug Administration to hurry up its timeline for implementing new medical device labels and a tracking system that could make recalling products easier and more efficient, while medical device companies fret that the process needs more time.

The groups submitted comments to the FDA this week as the comment period for the new unique device identifier (UDI) proposed regulation ended Wednesday.

Janet Trunzo, a senior executive of regulatory affairs for AdvaMed, a medical device manufacturer trade group, called the project "one of the most extensive and complex regulations to be issued in recent memory."

Based on a recent survey commissioned by the group, AdvaMed estimates UDI implementation could cost manufacturers millions in setting up new production equipment and possibly billions if they were forced to recall and destroy lots of old devices.

"Because of the cost and impact of this rule for companies we believe it is imperative that FDA get it right the first time," she told reporters on a press call Thursday.

What is the UDI?

The UDI itself is a two-part system, wtih an alphanumeric code that identifies the device model and and production identifier that gives the serial, lot or batch number, and an expiration date. The UDI would appear on device labels and packaging in plaintext, intelligible to humans, and a machine readable format, such as a barcode. The other major element is the Global UDI Database, an under-construction public online database that could help the government or providers track products during a recall.

The UDI rule, long championed by patient advocates, has been in the works for several years, but was given a push this summer when Congress passed an FDA user fee renewal bill that included language forcing the FDA to come up with proposed rules by the end of the year. The FDA released those rules in July.

Timeline

For stakeholders involved in this immense, multi-year project, one of the key issues is when they'll have to comply with the final rules, which are expected next year.

Under its proposed rules, published this summer, FDA put in place a staggered timeline, with higher-risk (Class III) devices expected to have UDI labeling on packaging or devices within one year of the publication of the final rule, intermediate-risk devices (Class II) within three years, and lower-risk (Class I) and unclassified devices in five years.

Some products, like implantable devices and software, require the UDI printed directly on the device itself, in a process called direct marking. This will be required from three to seven years after the final rule is published, with riskier devices getting direct marking first.

Too fast

Medical device manufacturers, perhaps unsurprisingly, disagree, and they stress the expense and cost of switching over to the new system: they will have to buy and install new labeling machines in factories, implement and validate production software and train staff.

In its comments submitted to the FDA, AdvaMed urged the agency to delay Class III requirements by one year, for a two-year post-final rule effective date. "There is no direct device safety and effectiveness issue that is compromised by extending the effective date for Class III devices by one year, and doing so will assist regulated persons and those in the health care community to integrate the UDI into their daily practices effectively," the group wrote.

The lobby also wants to clarify what they say could be one of the biggest troublemakers with implementing the system: what to do about devices that were created before the regulations take effect. That's why AdvaMed is asking that the rules be prospective, and only apply to devices produced after the effective date.

"The cost of applying UDI requirements to existing inventory once an effective date is reached is huge," AdvaMed said in its comments. "For example, sterilized devices cannot, in all cases, be safely and economically re-labeled, re-packaged and re-sterilized, and therefore, must be destroyed. Other devices that arguably could be reprocessed would present such large expense that doing so would be impractical. More importantly, such massive reprocessing would interfere with other device production, thus threatening potential shortages and an endangerment to public health."

Financial impact

AdvaMed has tried to come up with some figures to show how costly implementing UDIs would be to the industry, specifically focusing on the impact of direct marking.

According to an Accenture survey of 18 companies commissioned by the lobby and released Thursday, three-quarters expect significant costs for switching production lines to direct marking. The total associated costs per packaging line averaged around $125,000, according to the survey. All told, about 44 percent of respondents said they'd have to spend upwards of $1 million to purchase new manufacturing equipment, and the complete one-time cost of putting the system in place for all respondents was nearly $80 million.

n addition, respondents estimated they'd have to spend $2.8 billion in total to recall and reconfigure non-compliant equipment.

Retail exceptions

In addition to the timeline, GPOs and manufacturers are also somewhat split on the issue of medical products sold at drug stores. The FDA's proposed rules contain an exception for requiring UDI labels to products sold at retail outlets.

AdvaMed thinks the FDA should keep the rule as-is, and that all non-prescription retail products should be able to use the ubiquitous Universal Product Code "as an adequate unique device identifier." The group says that the UPC does what the UDI is meant to do and enables products to be accurately tracked.

But GPOs seem wary, at least in part. "Some of these retail products include automatic external defibrillators, insulin syringes and glucometers," Premier said. While Premier said the UPC could count as a UDI, they should still be subject to the UDI requirements, such as reporting to the product database.

Novation also backs limiting or doing away with the retail exception. "Novation does not believe a blanket exception of Class I devices sold in a retail setting is appropriate, nor in the best interest of patients," the GPO said in its release.

More exemptions

The manufacturers also want the FDA to create a specific list of devices that would ordinarily require direct marking, such as implantable devices, but are exempted from the requirement. Under the proposed rule, companies can "self-exempt" products that can't be directly marked, but the manufacturers worry that without a clear, explicit list of exempted devices they could be challenged by FDA field inspectors and receive citations or warning letters.

"We're requesting and have submitted a list of devices that are intrinsically unmarkable, and we go into details of what that would entail," Jeff Secunda, AdvaMed's VP of technology and regulatory affairs, said on a press call. Examples would include small dissolvable objects like absorbable sutures or amorphous ones like bone putty.

They also want to expand an exemption for lower-risk products sold in dispensing packs. Under the proposed rule, Class I items sold in boxes need a UDI for the box, but not each individual product. AdvaMed wants to expand this to all devices.

More broadly, the group questions the wisdom of direct marking implantable products in general, arguing that it makes more sense to have the packaging labeled, which would then be scanned before the device is implanted, with the scanned information getting logged into a patient's electronic health record.

"During, or just prior to, surgical implantation of the device the UDI is entered into the patient's EHR providing a permanent link between the patient and the implanted device," the group said in its comments. "This information will be available to all those who are authorized to access the patient's EHR and will not require a surgical procedure to extract the device and scan the UDI. Postmarket surveillance is conducted non-invasively on EHRs databases."

Under the FDA user fee renewal bill, final UDI rules would have to be issued within six months of ending the comment period -- that is, in May. 

President Obama: Faulty Medical Devices

This is a joyous day!

President Obama has been re-elected.  

In his 2012 State of the Union Address President Obama indicated that he was aware of faulty implanted medical devices and that targeted regulation is necessary to strengthen the U.S. free market.  

“We've all paid the price for lenders who sold mortgages to people who couldn't afford them, and buyers who knew they couldn't afford them. That’s why we need smart regulations to prevent irresponsible behavior. Rules to prevent financial fraud, or toxic dumping, or faulty medical devices don't destroy the free market. They make the free market work better,” Obama said.

Removal of  conflicted regulators from decision-making and rescinding industry entitlements  heightens assurance to patients that implanted devices are safe and effective.  Patients with access to accurate post-market data from CMS and hospitals make informed decisions and patient harm is reduced.  Businesses that produce valued implants will thrive.  

Let's get to work!