Most Doctors Get Gifts From Drug Companies

(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- The relationships between doctors and pharmaceutical companies may be too close for comfort.

A new study from Massachusetts General Hospital, Yale University, and the University of Melbourne and Royal Melbourne Hospital in Australia found nearly all practicing physicians in the United States have some kind of tie to drug manufacturers. But the relationships vary by practice, specialty, patient mix, and physicians’ professional activities.

Researchers reviewed a survey of 1,662 practicing physicians in six specialties (anesthesiology, cardiology, family practice, general surgery, internal medicine, and pediatrics) from late 2003 and 2004. They found 94 percent of doctors have at least one type of relationship with the drug industry that yields benefits like complimentary food or prescription samples. But more than a third of all doctors are reimbursed for costs associated with professional meetings or continuing medical education. And more than a quarter receive honoraria for consulting, lecturing or enrolling patients in clinical trials.

"The real questions relate to how much is too much, and how far is too far,” lead researcher Eric Campbell, Ph.D., Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, was quoted as saying. “It appears that these relationships benefit physicians and industry, but the important policy question is, 'To what extent do these relationships benefit patients in the terms of the care they receive.'"

The report shows cardiologists were more than twice as likely as family practitioners to receive payments from drug companies; group practices were three-times as likely to receive gifts compared to physicians practicing at hospitals; and pediatricians and anesthesiologist were much less likely than family doctors to receive samples, reimbursements and payments for professional services.

The authors caution if physicians don't start managing their relationships with drug companies better, there will be more pressure on government to do it for them.

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SOURCE: The New England Journal of Medicine, 2007;356:1742-1750