A Minnesota psychiatrist who received more than $350,000 in speaking and consulting fees from drugmakers will quit a panel that advises the state on drugs for low-income Medicaid patients, the Associated Press reports. John Simon says he’ll resign because the organization that originally asked him to serve, the Minnesota Psychiatric Society, was “a little uncomfortable with the appearance of conflict of interest” posed by his panel membership.

Financial relationships between pharma and two panel members, including Simon, came to light when the AP reviewed disclosure records filed by drugmakers under a pioneering state law. Eli Lilly and others paid Simon more than $350,000 in honoraria and fees while he was serving on the Minnesota Medicaid Drug Formulary Committee, according to the AP, while another adviser who resigned last year got $78,000.

The Minnesota Department of Human Services is asking the panel members to sign off on a new policy requiring them to reveal “real or perceived” conflicts of interest, including honoraria, compensation, free travel or other perks from drug companies within the past five years. They must abstain from voting on “any related matters that may come before the committee.” Department spokeswoman Karen Smigielski told the AP committee members are expected to approve the new policy before their next meeting on Tuesday.

The panel advises the human services agency on roughly $240 million worth of drugs for more than 200,000 patients, most of them mentally ill or disabled. Simon said his work as a paid speaker didn’t influence his decisions on the committee. He joined the panel in mid-2004, and said he will resign when the Psychiatric Society picks another psychiatrist to replace him. “I thought I did a good job of representing the patients of the Society and for the interest of psychiatric patients,” he tells the AP. “I have not heard otherwise.”

Linda Vukelich, the Minnesota Psychiatric Society’s executive director, praised Simon’s service but says there were concerns that he would have to sit out key votes under the new policy. She said the organization is grappling more broadly with the influence of business, including the drug industry, on medicine. “It’s bigger than just one appointee or one situation,” she says.

Ethics experts have said the links between Minnesota’s drug advisers and pharma raise the possibility of similar arrangements in other states. But tracing the influence is difficult: Outside of Minnesota, only Vermont and Maine require drugmakers to report payments to doctors for speeches, consulting and other services. New Jersey’s attorney general recently formed a task force to examine the issue.

[READER’S NOTE: We have only now provided the link to the AP story and we apologize for not doing so earlier. At the time the story was seen, we could not locate a link. How did we come across it then? Through an e-mail newsfeed courtesy of the AP.[