Doctors and Referrals

I recently had a question asked of me and I answered. I thought perhaps the answer may be of interest to others.

QUESTION:
Why doesn't an oncologist or other treater have an ethical obligation to make people aware of other trials and treatments that are available outside of their own facility? For example, when I asked about Satraplatin, I am simply told it is not available. It may not make a difference to us, but I think that information might be invaluable to other people at prior stages in this relentless disease.


ANSWER:
Primarily it is money. The Universities are paid on a per patient basis when they enter them into trials. They are paid either by the drug company or the NCI or other Federal and sometimes States. The money goes to keep the departments running (and the doctors paid). No trials - no money - simple as that.

However many University doctors (usually very senior doctors who have earned the right to be more independent) will advise about other trials at other Universities where they think it might be useful. And there is information on the Internet about the availability of trials across the United States.

The other interesting little known fact is that the Universities doing the trials will pay the non-university referring doctor a set amount to refer a patient to a trial. I know $2000 has been paid to Urologists for that referral. I do not know the complete range of the payment. Of course this payment is never disclosed to the patient from the Urologist of the people running the trial. One of the interesting side issues of this practice is having a great University and its medical school in your back yard but the local Urologist refers patients to a lessor one maybe 400 miles away because the far away University pays a finders fee or a higher finders fee than the local University.

Also this money becomes important referring patients within the University. For example if you are seeing a Urologist in a University setting he may refer you to a Radiation Oncologist, Medical Oncologist, etc., within the University. It is assumed by the Doctor/professors involved that these are the top of the line doctors. This is simply not true. The referring of doctors only within the University is an unwritten rule. If you want to stay employed there and have peace with your fellow Professors - you better feed them.

We do see great surgeons and some other fields in Universities but the run of the mill doctor in the university may or may not be (and frequently are not) the best in the business. This is why we talk about individual "Doctors of Excellence" and not treatment centers. A well know treatment center may be well know because of the politics involved or simply because they treat all disease with various levels of expertise. And that expertise is usually not prostate cancer. One should be able to pick their center based on the results of that center in the disease that you have and the particular doctor that has the most expertise. Many know who the "best" doctors are in any particular field but it is almost impossible for a lay person to find that information and, therefore, he relies on this primary doctor for referrals - perhaps a bad thing to do.

There is very little that goes on in the Medical industry that does not involve the exchange of money in some way. the old "follow the money" is as important here as it is elsewhere. The "old boy network" is extremely strong here and if you want to play you better bring in the money.

It is often said as a Professor you must "publish or perish". It really means "produce money or perish". This production of money is also involved with getting donations, outside of the trials, for Chairs, new equipment, new buildings, etc. You could be the greatest in the world but if you don't produce income from trials, etc - you will not be there long. It is a requirement (maybe unwritten but well understood) in these institutions.

I have asked for years to bring the trials down to the level of the just diagnosed. There is little being done on this even today. Why do we not attack this disease with things that we use in advanced or end stage disease to see if these protocols may be successful at the beginning stage. Again it may well be money. When the drug companies are making huge sums of money off of end stage disease - do they really want to fund trials that may cut off the sources for these end stage medications. Imagine if you will if we could cure all prostate cancer (and other cancers) at the front end - how much money would be lost at the back end of this disease.

I think the other thing we overlook is that Universities are really large corporations no different than the large corporations that we have seen do wrong things in any industry. I have seen similar things within the Universities - it just does not make the news - or if it does it is on the back page.

If you don't believe me look at the thousands and thousands of patients are killed in hospitals because of wrong diagnosis, wrong medications, infections, on and on. These come up occasionally in the newspaper - but little seems to ever get done. If we had something else out there killing these thousands - all hell would break loose. We have had some 3000+ over 4 years of our young men killed in Iraq and the population is up in arms. Yet me kill more than this on a monthly basis in hospitals across this country and nothing is said. To me there is little difference in killing on the battlefield and killing by the medical profession. Both should be given equal time and both could be prevented.

OK, enough of my soapbox.