Stanford will post faculty's consulting activities

Stanford University School of Medicine will post on its Web site the payments its faculty members receive for consulting or royalties from businesses, the school announced today. The plan is part of a growing movement, from academia to healthcare to government, to reveal potential conflicts of interest between medicine and industry.

Physicians and researchers at Stanford already must disclose fees over $5,000 that they receive for speeches, consulting, or royalties for their inventions or discoveries. But the new policy, which will take effect later this year, will make these collaborations with industry more widely accessible to the public, a statement from Stanford said.

In November the Cleveland Clinic decided to go public with its doctors' consulting relationships. Descriptions of doctors on its Web site include the names of companies with which they have collaborations worth $5,000 or more.

Last month Massachusetts banned gifts from drug and medical device companies to physicians, limited how much doctors can receive for meals, and required businesses to publicly disclose payments to doctors over $50 for certain types of consulting and speaking engagements.

US Senator Charles Grassley has pushed for a similar federal law, while investigating high-profile cases in which large payments from drug companies were made to researchers but may not have been properly disclosed.