McDermott - Practice Areas - Health - Conflicts of Interest

Conflicts of Interest - Health

Today’s conflicts of interest compliance standards relating to clinical care and biomedical research exceed the minimum requirements of applicable law in various respects. To meet these standards, a conflicts of interest compliance program must address both individual and institutional conflicts. The program must also be carefully coordinated and integrated across various related functional areas (including business transactions, investments, and purchasing matters such as supply chain management and formulary and device committees) and with compliance in other vendor relationships, technology transfer and other invention commercialization programs, medical education, and fundraising.

Conflict of interest policies alone are not sufficient alone to manage overall compliance risk arising from conflicts. Institutions should have various inter-related policies that are well coordinated with conflicts of interest policies, including general policies and procedures on financial relationships with vendors (e.g., CME funding, gifts, entertainment, unrestricted research grants, consulting relationships, equity interests), policies on vendor access to healthcare facilities and personnel, policies and procedures for assuring independence of members of the committees responsible for reviewing and approving products for purchase and use in an institution, and other procurement-related policies.

McDermott Will & Emery has been engaged by providers, vendors and payors to design and implement conflicts remediation plans and program infrastructure that respond to these complex, multi-dimensional compliance challenges in a way that best meets the particular needs and capabilities of the organization involved.