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US ONCOLOGY RESEARCH
Statement of Mission and Ethics
Mission Statement: To accelerate the cure of cancer and improve the outcome of our cancer patients by performing well-designed clinical trials that evaluate new anticancer treatments and prevention strategies, and, in so doing, make these new treatments rapidly available to patients in their communities.
- US ONCOLOGY physicians care for a large segment of the US cancer population and believe it is proper and necessary that they engage in and make available to their patients the most promising research opportunities.
- The physicians and directors of US ONCOLOGY believe that clinical cancer research is a professional obligation and trust that must be safeguarded.
- The physicians and directors of US ONCOLOGY will actively seek to offer US ONCOLOGY patients participation in scientifically sound clinical research studies that offer the most promising and state of the art cancer treatment and prevention strategies.
- Physicians and other health professionals directing clinical trials must have demonstrated experience and competence in conducting clinical cancer research studies.
- Research trials will be monitored for safety and for adherence to the approved protocol. The quality assurance reviews are conducted by the Data Safety Monitoring Board, which will report regularly to the US ONCOLOGY Research Steering Committee.
- The US ONCOLOGY physicians and directors have established safeguards to ensure that conflicts of interest do not influence clinical research. US Oncology has adopted the ASCO Conflict of interest and implementation of Disclosure Policy that was approved by ASCO on July 22, 1996. US Oncology physicians involved in Clinical Research will disclose their relevant finaNational Cancer Instituteal relationships in writing annually to central research operations who will coordinate this process. In addition, the Disease Committee chairs will request disclosure of potential conflicts of interest from the committee members at the beginning of each meeting. Physicians or directors with significant commercial affiliations, as determined by the Disease Committee Chair, will not vote on whether to implement a clinical research project within US ONCOLOGY and will not serve as the priNational Cancer Institutepal investigator.
- US ONCOLOGY physicians may be compensated for time spent conducting clinical research studies. Only compensation, which is usual and customary for clinical research performed, will be considered appropriate. Items such as travel to meetings, market-rate honoraria for time spent preparing and delivering presentations or lunch/dinner meetings that are designed to facilitate free exchange of information and research activity are acceptable.
- Physicians may not accept improper or excessive remuneration for placing patients on clinical trials, but will be compensated for customary work including: filing of any needed regulatory documents, recruitment and educational activities among other physicians, staying up-to-date with the trial's findings, screening, examination and chart review of potential patients, supervision of research personnel including research nurses, data managers and staff, explanation of the study to patients and informed consent, ordering of medications, monitoring of toxicities, measuring antitumor responses, reporting adverse events, providing short- and long-term follow-up of patients, and analyzing data. US ONCOLOGY practices will receive remuneration through the central operations of US ONCOLOGY to ensure usual and customary compensation standards.
- Pharmaceutical company sponsors or other commercial entities may have drug development partnership arrangements with US ONCOLOGY. Such partners research studies may receive priority status in the US Oncology research network provided there is not a competing study of greater scientific or medical value.
- US ONCOLOGY physicians will promptly inform their patients about any important new information gained about the treatments being administered on clinical research studies.
- The results obtained from the clinical cancer research studies will be objectively analyzed and reported to the medical community as quickly as possible so that other cancer patients may also benefit.
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