We know that some medical companies have entered into questionable relationships with doctors and other medical personnel. It is a question of conflict of interest that in some cases appears to come close to bribery. The latest incident concerns an organization I had never heard of, the National Quality Forum. The forum is not a government agency but has been paid millions of dollars by Medicare to set the benchmarks that Medicare uses to compensate hospitals based on performance.
Dr. Christine Cassel, the top executive of the Forum, is paid a goodly sum (c.$500,000) to run the organization. It so happens that she is also on the board of Kaiser Foundation Health Plans and Hospitals as well as Premier, Inc., a medical organization. Her board position at each company pays her in the low six figures. It is unclear how she handles these conflicts of interest.
The Forum was in the news last month when the Justice Dept accused the former co-chair of one of the Forum's endorsement committees of accepting $11,600,000 in kickbacks to help a drugmaker win favorable treatment.
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