Harvard Medical School assistant professor Paul M. Copeland routinely gives about a dozen industry-sponsored talks each year, earning anywhere from $1,250 to $2,000 per gig.

Copeland, who heads the endocrinology division at Partners Healthcare-affiliate North Shore Medical Center, says he isn’t in it for the money.

These information sessions—or “talks for docs”—improve patient care, he says, and all the material he presents has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

But due to a new Partners policy announced last April, Copeland cannot register for the 2010 speaking cycle.

Partners Healthcare, which owns Harvard-affiliates Mass. General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, recently overhauled its conflict of interest policy, which proponents hail as one of the strictest in the nation.

Under the revised policy, Partners employees face a host of restrictions, including bans on speaking at industry-sponsored events and receiving stock options from pharmaceutical companies. Outside pay for senior officials sitting on boards of drug or medical device-making companies has been capped as well.

Though many regard the new policy as a much-needed check on industry ties to medicine—an issue that has received heightened national scrutiny in recent years—some Partners employees caution that the new restrictions may be too broad and could ultimately stifle essential physician activity.

For example, continuing medical education talks sponsored by drug companies, Copeland argues, provide doctors with the latest information on treatments and address patient care issues.

“If the talks are well done, you educate physicians about the proper role of medications,” Copeland says, adding that he regularly fields an hour’s worth of questions from doctors who attend his talks about case studies and alternative treatments.

“Patients and doctors benefit from these talks,” Copeland says. “That’s why it’s so disheartening.”

LONG IN THE WORKS

In the fall of 2007, Partners Healthcare embarked on a conflict of interest review to better define the relationship between industry and medicine as well as strengthen oversight of physician activity with drug companies.

Conflict of interest issues gained national attention the following year, when Senator Charles E. Grassley, an Iowa Republican and the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, alleged that Mass. General psychiatrist Joseph Biederman received $1.6 million in consulting and speaking fees from the makers of drugs that he used to treat children for bipolar disorders.

As Grassley charged other prominent physicians across the nation with similar allegations, many medical institutions looked to revamp existing policies in the face of national scrutiny.

Harvard Medical School began a review of its own conflict of interest policy in Jan. 2009 in conjunction with Harvard’s currently ongoing efforts to develop University-wide recommendations and guidelines.