A Conflict of Interest For Doctors

belk David Belk

Greetings, I hope everyone is enjoying this holiday season.

About three weeks ago I was interviewed for a show called Mind the Business where I discussed three stories that had been in the news recently about fraud and conflicts of interest in healthcare.

I created a video from that interview in order to show exactly what I was talking about, including some of the sources of my information.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHunCTUZ-cE

Even if you’re already familiar with the stories I’m speaking of, I think you’ll find this video is both interesting and alarming. In this interview I tie all three stories together to show that there’s a serious conflict of interest in how doctors are paid when they administer medications in their offices. I further show that this conflict of interest is not only driving up the prices of the medications these doctors administer, it’s also encouraging a significant amount of fraud in the medical field.

I think we can all agree that fraud harms everyone and this is especially true for healthcare fraud. The most important point I make in this video, though, is that punishing fraud after the fact is never enough because people will have already been harmed. We should always be careful to never allow fraud to be encouraged in any industry, especially healthcare. Eliminating conflicts of interest, whenever possible, can go a long way toward preventing harm before it occurs.

Dave Belk MD