Med School Policies Earn C+

Harvard Medical School received a C+ from the American Medical Students Association (AMSA) last week for its efforts to limit pharmaceutical company access to students.

The organization’s first annual PharmFree Scorecard evaluated policies on pharmaceutical access at 116 American medical schools. The ranking is part of AMSA’s efforts to combat what its Web site calls the “insidious influence of the pharmaceutical industry in medicine.”

Outgoing AMSA President Jay Bhatt, who helped lead the Scorecard project, said interactions with drug company representatives can prejudice medical judgment.

“The marketing practices of the industry are dirty and they are influencing medical education in a way that’s not the best for patients,” Bhatt said.

According to information released by AMSA, medical schools that have no formal policy-restricting interactions but where “pharmaceutical representatives are not allowed to interact with students according to the administration” received the C+ grade.

Of the 116 schools rated, 13 schools were rated higher than HMS, 23 received the same grade, and 80 were given lower ones—including 40 medical schools that got grades of F for having no policy, no plans to form a policy, or because the school actively promotes interaction with industry representatives.

AMSA gave five medical schools, including those at the University of Stanford, University of Pennsylvania, and Yale University, an A for “comprehensive policies.” Another eight schools received a B for “limited policies.”

According to HMS spokesman Don L. Gibbons, the Medical School bans pharmaceutical company access to students during their first two years at the school, but its affiliate institutions, such as Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where students train during their last two years, have their own policies that are not subject to Medical School control.

“The hospitals, not HMS control access in the second two years,” he wrote in an e-mailed statement. “Those policies are in flux and were prior to the AMSA survey.”

Bhatt said he hoped the scorecard would prompt medical schools to implement more stringent policies.

“Already this is creating quite a bit of noise in the medical community,” Bhatt said. “I think we’ll see some movement among medical schools on this policy in the next year.”

But according to Gibbons, the AMSA rating does not necessitate a change in the policies set by the Medical School itself, though he said he could not speak to the policies of its 18 affiliates.

“There is not [pharmaceutical] contact in the first two years, the years we control policy for,” Gibbons wrote. “So, we have nothing to change based on the AMSA survey.”

Spokespeople from Massachusetts General Hospital, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, three of the largest HMS affiliates, did not return requests for comment on their policies.

—Staff writer Clifford M. Marks can be reached at cmarks@fas.harvard.edu.