From MSNBC:Four out of five doctors surveyed said they let drug and device makers buy them food and drinks despite recent efforts to tighten ethics rules and avoid conflicts of interest.
The national survey also found that family doctors were more likely to meet with industry sales representatives, and that cardiologists were more likely to pocket fees than other specialists.
The study is the first to document the extent of the relationships between doctors and sales reps since 2002 when a leading industry group adopted voluntary guidelines discouraging companies from giving doctors gifts or tickets. In general, researchers found hardly anything had changed since previous studies a couple years earlier.
We say: It takes a lot more than a slice of pizza or handful of pens to influence what drugs I prescribe, or what devices I use. Patients also need to realize that the hospital formulary restricts what drugs a doctor can use in the hospital to a limited set that the hospital can procure, often based on price. For outptient care, insurance companies do the same thing with their own formularies of approved drugs that they will pay for. The drug reps do provide less perks than years ago, and now put the money into direct to patient advertising which helped fuel the Celebrex/Vioxx/Bextra debaucle so that was hardly an improvement.
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