My lede:

Highly paid consultants for orthopedic device makers disclose their company ties about half the time and rarely share details with readers about their financial relationships, according to a new study calling for more transparency.

Researchers examined payments from five orthopedic device makers to consultants in 2007 and then zeroed in on the 32 researchers, nearly all physicians, who received more than $1 million each to see whether those relationships were disclosed when they published articles the following year.

When writing directly about the firm’s products, authors paid $1 million or more disclosed their company tie half the time, said the Archives of Internal Medicine study, published online Sept. 13. Only one of the 26 orthopedics-related journals studied, The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, required authors to acknowledge they were paid more than $10,000.

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My lede:

The information patients typically use when looking for a new doctor is not very helpful in determining physician quality, according to a new study of more than 10,000 Massachusetts physicians caring for 1.1 million patients.

Researchers found little correlation between physician performance on 124 process-based quality measures in 30 clinical areas and characteristics such as medical education, board certification, malpractice claim payments and disciplinary actions commonly listed by health plans and consumer websites.

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