Washington, DC - Within weeks of receiving a letter of inquiry from Sen Herb Kohl (D-WI) regarding its partnership with the Cardiovascular Research Foundation (CRF) for next year's i2 Summit, ACC CEO Dr Jack Lewin says the ACC has provided answers to the questions posed in the letter and is hopeful that the committee's concerns have been allayed.

As reported by the Wall Street Journal's Health Blog earlier this week [1], Kohl sent a letter dated July 22 to ACC president Dr Doug Weaver asking him to provide details of the arrangement between the ACC and CRF to coproduce the interventional meeting held concurrently with the ACC annual scientific sessions every year [2]. Kohl chairs the US Senate Special Committee on Aging.

According to a copy of Kohl's letter posted by the Health Blog, Kohl asked for details and conditions of the five-year partnership; copies of any documents outlining terms of the partnership; information on any financial exchanges between the ACC and CRF; a list of board members of organizational officers who, over the past five years, have served or are currently serving both the ACC and CRF; and a list of all financial contributors to the ACC who represent or are members of the medical device industry.

Lewin, on behalf of the ACC, responded the next day with a letter emphasizing that any partnership with the CRF and any resulting meeting content will be "entirely governed" by the ACC and promising to provide additional answers and documents within the week [3].

Now, in an interview with heartwire, Lewin said that "every one" of the committee's questions has been answered and, to the best of his knowledge, its concerns have been assuaged.

"I think they are satisfied," he said. "Typically what happens with these kinds of inquiries is that you don't really hear anything more back unless they have outstanding issues." So far, he continued, "I've heard from one of their chief staff people, who thanked us for getting all the information to them as promptly as we did."

As previously reported by heartwire, the ACC and CRF announced in late May that they would be partnering on the i2 Summit for a five-year term, starting in 2009, prompting some cardiologists to question the wisdom of the decision, primarily due to the perception that CRF maintains close ties to interventional device and drug companies for trial funding and to sponsor meeting content.

In response to blog posts critical of the alliance, the ACC sent an email to some of its members, asserting that "a blogger [was] disseminating erroneous messages regarding our collaboration with the CRF on the 2009 i2 Summit," but that these were "patently untrue." An ACC spokesperson explained to heartwire that this response was based primarily on the fact that the ACC had just come out of meetings with Sen Charles Grassley (R-IA) and Rep Bart Stupak (D-MI), from the Senate and House oversight committees, respectively, on conflicts of interest, inappropriate industry partnerships, and fraud, that focused in part on appropriate partnerships with industry sponsors. At the time, the ACC was unaware that a separate query was in the works from Kohl's committee.

According to Lewin, Kohl's office was fielding inquiries from "disgruntled sources," suggesting that the committee look into the ACC-CRF partnership.

"I can't tell you who it is, but I can tell you that whoever it is has a vendetta, and for me it would be wonderful to just sit down with whoever is upset and talk to them. This is a dysfunctional way to complain, through this anonymity," Lewin said. "I can tell you this: there is no smoking gun here at all—there's a commitment on our end to do what's very best in terms of educating interventional cardiologists. And the vast majority of them think this [partnership] is great."

Lewin also pointed out that CRF's flagship meeting, the annual TCT conference in October, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, has, like other meetings, changed with time. Some of the grumbled assertions about its close ties to industry may, in Lewin's opinion, reflect a different era, when expectations about the relationship between sponsors and content were very different.

"Times have changed," he said. "There are people who have had strong opinions about the TCT meeting of the past, but we've looked at all the details and we're very impressed. CRF has the highest ratings from ACC CME accreditation. They may not always have had this, but they do now. And they certainly have agreed to all the things that we consider to be paramount in our approach to meetings, content, ethics, and very clear transparency with respect to relationships with industry. . . . Our view of it is whatever happened way back when, I can't really answer to, but I'm convinced today that the parties that we're contracting with are committed to the same level of scrutiny as we require."