USA: Menos médicos de universidades más de la privada...

When looking for a doctor to travel the country and tout its costly prescription fish oil pill, GlaxoSmithKline didn't select a heavyweight university researcher.

Instead, it wrote checks to Tara Dall, a Delafield primary-care doctor who entered private practice in 2001.

For just three months of speaking engagements last year, GlaxoSmithKline paid Dall $45,000, ranking her among the most highly paid of more than 3,600 doctors nationwide who spoke for the company, which released records for only one quarter of the year.

The practice of doing promotional speaking for drug companies has come under fire in recent years.

Critics say the talks can be biased and contribute to spiraling health care costs by promoting the use of expensive brand-name drugs over generics. The practice, according to critics, also leads to more non-approved and potentially harmful use of those drugs, so-called off-label prescribing.

For years, drug companies sought out influential university doctors with impressive credentials to bring their message to other doctors and persuade them to write prescriptions for their products.

But companies have been forced to back away from that approach as a growing number of medical schools, including the University of Wisconsin-Madison, have developed conflict-of-interest policies that ban such talks.

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About 45 doctors from Wisconsin got payments from GlaxoSmithKline of at least $1,000 during the quarter for which the company released records. All but 10 of them were private-practice physicians.

Nationally, only eight doctors among the top 25 paid speakers had full-time university positions.

At least three other firms - Merck, Eli Lilly and Cephalon - also have listed payments to doctors for parts or all of 2009 activity.

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En siete días estaremos en Albacete como ponentes en las I Jornadas Farmacríticas.

Esto es un buen adelanto...