John Iglehart’s rather soft questioning of Guidant’s CEO in Health Affairs comes under most excellent and accurate fire from Roy Poses over at Health Care Renewal.

A prominent editor of a prominent health policy journal devoted considerable effort to and published considerable pages of an interview with the CEO of a large device manufacturing firm, yet avoided asking skeptical or probing questions about a current problem that raises substantive concerns about the quality of the company’s products, and even bigger concerns about how the company has dealt with quality problems. The interviewer avoided asking any questions about a similar case from a few years ago. This is only one article, but it seems to indicate how deferentially the health services and policy literature may treat leaders of large health care organizations. 

Health Affairs has a delicate balance to tread. It publishes inter sting interviews with CEOs that a more than just puff pieces–and one doesn’t often see those these days.  However, in order to keep corporate CEOs coming to talk to them they can’t attack them directly. But, you would think that in the light of what’s gone on at Guidant recently, there’d be a bit more of an attempt to hold various feet to the fire, and I hope we’ll see more of it in the future.