How do you spell 'kickback'?

[letstalk]

Recently I've been diagnosed with something pretty signficant. Today I had an eighth appointment and met my third doctor of a 'team'. But today was interesting.

I had met with my second doctor the hour before, discussed my plan, to which she agreed and thought it made sense, given the results. So I went off to my next appt. In preparation of meeting my third doctor, the nurse practitioner met with me and as an aside, mentioned my medical issue had been brought up in a team of doctors meeting that morning, and they had wanted to use me in a research study because I fit the profile. Then after about half an hour, the third doctor came in and 'wanted to talk'

The treatment he recommends is contrary to what my first two doctors suggested. I mentioned that to him and he simply said he disagreed with the first two's advice and recommended this alternative treatment.

Do doctors get kickbacks/commissions for getting a target patient for a research study? His advice would keep me out of work about four months longer than the advice of the first two doctors.

PS I knew then what I was planning to do, but I listened to him, asked questions and wondered how much money he'd get for this. If so, wouldn't that represent a huge conflict of some kind.

[cbg]

I used to work for a company that did the actual lab work for these studies. While I was in the HR department and not involved in the studies themselves, it was a pretty small company and we were all pretty much aware of what was going on elsewhere in the company. I was there for two years and I never heard anything to make me believe that the doctors were paid commissions or anything else for getting a patient to sign up for a study.