The Chicago Tribune reports on the University of Illinois

Karisa King and Jodi Cohen at the Chicago Tribune have published an excellent story about how some doctors and admininstrators decided to use the name and reputation of the University of Illinois in support of a medical device company.  With access to internal emails, it becomes clear that an explicit decision was made to do so by very high-ranking officials:Benedetti, the head of surgery, sought advice and permission from Jerry Bauman, interim vice president for health affairs, and Dr. Dimitri Azar, dean of the College of Medicine, according to an Oct. 23 email obtained under the Freedom of Information Act."On one side it would be a lot of free publicity for our program, on the other side we could be criticized to be included in an industry generated campaign," Benedetti wrote. The two responded separately that the visibility would be good for the program.Others apparently had doubts:After receiving a Jan. 10 email from Benedetti, in which he forwarded the group picture and congratulated the team for the "important recognition," Dr. Bernard Pygon forwarded the email to a colleague and wrote: "Interesting that he calls this recognition — it's an ad for a for profit company."On the financial front:The Tribune also found that some doctors pictured in the ad did not initially disclose their financial ties to the company that makes the robot, Intuitive Surgical Inc., as required by the university's policies on conflicts of interest. But it appears that the les...
Source: Running a hospital - Category: Health Managers Source Type: blogs