With all of the attention given to doctors' dealings with drug companies, let's not forget that hospital execs may have some shenanigans of their own. Yesterday, Walt Bogdanich of the NY Times, in a story headlined "Hospital Chiefs Get Paid for Advice on Selling," told the story of hospital executives benefiting from payments made by companies their hospitals do business with. Similar to the MD-Pharma story, this one has posh resort settings, big payments for little time commitment, etc.
The "institute" created to arrange such meetings once shunned the journalist's inquiries. They denied that any hospital exec member made as much as $50,000 a year from the "advice consultations," then later revealed that indeed payments did reach that high.
Great story, revealing another troubling area of conflict of interest in health care.
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