It was all about money: Drug company incentive payments

David Olson was suicidal, in a hospital. His psychiatrist tried repeatedly to recruit him into clinical trials of a new drug. Indeed, drug companies paid his doctor thousands of dollars for each patient the doctor recruited. But David refused to be a test subject. His doctor discharged him from the hospital. David committed suicide two weeks later.

The state medical board found the doctor had “failed to appreciate the risks of taking Patient 46 off Clozaril, failed to respond appropriately to the patient’s rapid deterioration and virtually ignored the patient’s suicidality.”

David sister, Susie Olson, said the doctor “had no time for my brother unless David agreed to get into a drug study. He said, ‘You’re wasting my time and the hospital’s.’ It was all about money.”

This doctor was not a marginalized “bad apple.” He was the president of the Minnesota Psychiatric Society. Many other disciplined doctors also received thousands of dollars from drug companies. An analysis reported by Gardiner Harris and Janet Roberts in today’s New York Times found the drug makers gave a total of $1.7 million to 103 Minnesota doctors who had been formally disciplined by the state medical board, over the period from 1997 to 2005.

Advice: Before choosing a new doctor, ask the office manager if the doctor accepts money from drug companies.

Read another of our Minnesota stories on this topic.

Don't rock the boat, the experts told her father: Misdiagnosis

Pat's journey has taken decades. And she isn't cured. She lives with her illness the way diabetics live with theirs. But now she has graduated cum laude from college, and has a job. She hopes to work in human services and counsel people. "This is the next phase of my life, helping other people not be trapped by this illness."

Now 54, she had lived for long years in the best hospitals, diagnosed and misdiagnosed: depression. Paranoia. Bipolarity. Schizophrenia. But her father didn’t listen to the experts who told him not to rock the boat, to just to let her be stable, and live the life she knew, sheltered and safe.

The secrets of her eventual success in getting to health? Her father’s persistence. A creative hospital program that helped her re-invent her life. A new drug, Clozaril. And as her proud father says, the fact that "Pat never once said, 'I can't do something.'" By themselves, none of these were enough, but together, they have given her back her life.

Read her full story in Beverly Beckham‘s article in the Boston Globe.