Conflicts of Interest

Clinical practice guidelines and the overuse of health care services: need for reform

Key Points Specialty bias and fee-for-service conflicts of interest threaten the validity of clinical practice guidelines and may lead to overdiagnosis, overtreatment and increasing health care costs. Clinical practice guidelines issued by medical specialty societies in North America frequently call for greater use of health care services linked to their specialties and are often at […]

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Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services – Sunday Extra

The Australian Government’s Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry asked me to author a Report on Conflicts of Interest and Disclosure as they investigated the poor ethics of their financial institutions. Following the submission of my report, Sunday Extra on Radio National (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) interviewed me to discuss

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Insinuation Anxiety: Concern That Advice Rejection Will Signal Distrust After Conflict of Interest Disclosures

Abstract When expert advisors have conflicts of interest, disclosure is a common regulatory response. In four experiments (three scenario experiments involving medical contexts, and one field experiment involving financial consequences for both parties), we show that disclosure of a financial or nonfinancial conflict of interest can have a perverse effect on the advisor–advisee relationship. Disclosure,

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Conflicts of interest and disclosure

The Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry was established on 14 December 2017 by the former Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia, His Excellency General the Honourable Sir Peter Cosgrove AK MC (Retd) to enquire into misconduct in the banking, superannuation and financial services industry. I was asked by the Royal Commission to respond to the following questions: How

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Conflict of interest disclosure as an expertise cue: Differential effects of automatic and deliberative processing.

Abstract Disclosure—informing advice recipients of the potential bias of an advisor—is a popular tool to manage conflicts of interest. However, conflict of interest disclosures usually compete with a host of other information that is important, relevant or interesting to the advisee. Across one field study and five experiments, we examine the effect of conflict of

Conflict of interest disclosure as an expertise cue: Differential effects of automatic and deliberative processing. Read More »

Policy solutions to conflicts of interest: the value of professional norms

Abstract Advisors, such as physicians, financial advisors, lawyers and accountants, often face a conflict of interest – that is, a clash between their professional and personal interests. Such conflicts can lead to biased and corrupt advice. In this paper, I focus on how conflicts of interest can cause good people to unintentionally cross ethical boundaries

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The effects of public disclosure of industry payments to physicians on patient trust: A randomized experiment.

Abstract Financial ties between physicians and the pharmaceutical and medical device industry are common, but little is known about how patient trust is affected by these ties. The purpose of this study was to evaluate how viewing online public disclosure of industry payments affects patients’ trust ratings for physicians, the medical profession, and the pharmaceutical

The effects of public disclosure of industry payments to physicians on patient trust: A randomized experiment. Read More »

Association Between Academic Medical Center Pharmaceutical Detailing Policies and Physician Prescribing

This paper investigates the question: “How did physician prescribing behavior change after US academic medical centers implemented policies that limited pharmaceutical salesperson detailing?”   Abstract Importance In an effort to regulate physician conflicts of interest, some US academic medical centers (AMCs) enacted policies restricting pharmaceutical representative sales visits to physicians (known as detailing) between 2006

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Effect of physician disclosure of specialty bias on patient trust and treatment choice.

Abstract This paper explores the impact of disclosures of bias on advisees. Disclosure—informing advisees of a potential bias—is a popular solution for managing conflicts of interest. Prior research has focused almost exclusively on disclosures of financial conflicts of interest but little is known about how disclosures of other types of biases could impact advisees. In

Effect of physician disclosure of specialty bias on patient trust and treatment choice. Read More »