Probing Doctor and Pharmaceutical Industry Ties, part 2
The National Survey on Doctor-Industry Relationships reports the last two decades has seen a flurry of writing and research about the relationship between doctors and pharmaceutical, medical device, and other medically related industries. The authors of this survey mention a review of 16 studies published between 1982 and 1997 that suggests doctors and industry reps, on average, met four times a month, and accepted six gifts a year from them. Dr Eric Campbell at the Institute for Health Policy, Boston, and colleagues, used information about the doctors' financial links with industry and then tried to predict the factors that influence them. They surveyed 3,167 doctors from six specialties: anesthesiology, cardiology, family practice, general surgery, internal medicine, and pediatrics. The response rate was over 50 per cent. The study authors review the results of a survey of US doctors that was conducted by the Institute on Medicine as a Profession (IMAP) and address three questions:
(1) What do doctors actually receive (including financial incentives) from industry reps and their companies?
(2) How often do they meet with industry reps?
(3) What characterizes the relationship between doctors and these industries?
The results showed that:
-- 94 per cent of doctors reported some type of relationship with the pharmaceutical industry.
-- 83 per cent said these relationships involved receiving food in the workplace.
-- 78 per cent said they involved receiving drug samples.
-- 35 per cent received reimbursement for costs of going to professional meetings or continuing medical education (CME).
-- 28 per cent received payments for consulting, giving lectures, or enrolling patients in trials.
-- Cardiologists were more than twice as likely to receive payments as family doctors.
-- Family doctors met with industry reps more often than did doctors in other specialisms.
-- Doctors who practised on their own or in group practices met with reps more often than those working in hospitals and clinics.
In conclusion, the researchers said these results show that: "Relationships between physicians and industry are common and underscore the variation among such relationships according to specialty, practice type, and professional activities."