Hospital Chiefs Get Paid for Advice on Selling

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/17/business/17group.html?_r=1&oref=slogin


One recent sun-splashed afternoon, executives who run some of America’s leading nonprofit hospitals met at a stately Colorado resort for an unusual mission: to advise companies confidentially on how best to sell their drugs, medical devices and financial services to hospitals.

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They were also paid thousands of dollars for the advice they offered to dozens of companies, like Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup. The hospital officials and their spouses received a free trip to the luxury resort, where they could join the Morgan Stanley Tennis Tournament or the GE Healthcare Barbecue. All of this came courtesy of the Healthcare Research and Development Institute, a for-profit company that is owned by about three dozen hospital executives, but underwritten by 40 or so of its handpicked corporate members, all suppliers to hospitals.

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The Connecticut attorney general, Richard Blumenthal, is investigating whether the organization allows certain vendors to buy access to hospital leaders who are in a position to influence what supplies or services their institutions purchase. As a result, Mr. Blumenthal said, hospitals may not be getting the best deals, either in terms of cost or quality.

“At the very least it suggests insider dealings — an insidious, incestuous, insider system,” said Mr. Blumenthal, who has issued more than 100 subpoenas, mostly to hospital suppliers, including several dozen last week.
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america is a crime scene



chiefs having lunch before filling their pockets with pharma Baron's money

investigate it.

I wonder if they also discussed the booming business in brokering body parts. All surgeons and medical students need to practice these minimally invasive procedures, using the latest surgical implements, on somebody or somebodies body part(s).

Everyone should read "Body Broker" by Annie Cheney and find out the truth about what happens to those who sign up (or don't, as is more often the case) to have their body donated to science OR cremated.