Great point, and given that the purpose of this is to inform I think it would be useful to capture individuals such as yourself. What I did is add an additional field that says, “If not free of ties for 5 years, fee of ties as of (date)” so that you could add yourself and indicate an “as of” date.

With regard to cost reductions that come from piloting equipment, I think we should limit declaration to direct, personal financial gain. It would be up to anyone using this information to inquire about indirect financial gain in their sourcing, and by the same token, for people adding themselves to be accountable for the accuracy and currency of their statements.

This would allow a journalist using this information to use their judgement. Does that work and would it respect the work that you’ve done in this area? Thanks for thinking of this, and reinforcing the power of Web2.0 to improve ideas with others’ experience. Keep up the great work,

Ted

Good question. Given that the audience here is journalists, why don’t we exclude any gifts under $50 US. Open to any other suggestions,

Ted

It is a changing environment and we’ve adopted a policy hospital-wide that goes into full effect January 1, 2009. My Department has been totally clean with Pharma and direct patient care equipment for 13+ years, but we do trials of non-patient care equipment (software, IT hardware, etc.) and accept support for that–mostly in the form of cost reductions for the purchase. So how do I list myself?

Regards to you and best wishes of the season./Steve