Sunshine Act/Conflict of Interest

As with previous years, it’s time to openly publish my conflict of interests, board memberships, advisory board positions, and government activities so that anyone reading my opinions has full transparency.

The federal government has made financial disclosure very easy with the Sunshine Act.

The Physician Payments Sunshine Act (Sunshine Act) requires manufacturers of drugs, medical devices and biologicals that participate in U.S. federal health care programs to report certain payments and items of value given to physicians and teaching hospitals. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has been charged with implementing the Sunshine Act and has called it the Open Payments Program.

Last week I enrolled in the Open Payments program and below are my results - per the national reporting system, no payments have been made to me by any manufacturer.

I serve as a Board member of Imprivata, a healthcare security company that recently went public.  I do not currently own any shares of the company.

I serve as an Advisory Board member of QPID, a Boston-based startup that creates tools to mine unstructured data.

I serve as an Advisory Board member of KLAS, the “consumer reports” of healthcare IT.

I serve on the Editorial Advisory Board of FierceHealthIT, a publisher of healthcare IT news and information.

I serve as an Advisory Board member to New Leaf Venture Partners, an investor in healthcare related companies.

I serve as an Advisory Board member to Flatiron, a oncology care management startup.

I serve as an Advisory Board member to the Commonwealth Fund, a healthcare philanthropy.  

I provide advice to government agencies in Japan and China.

I serve as co-chair of the HIT Standards Committee.

I am careful to ensure that Board and advisory board activities are limited to companies that are not vendors to Beth Israel Deaconess.

That’s it.   I disclose all financial relationships to Harvard and Beth Israel Deaconess and am careful to list my relationships in blog posts when I mention any company.