Médicos / Industria farmacéutica: Menos mal que...vamos mejor.

Increased scrutiny of the potential conflicts of interest posed when physicians accept gifts and payments from industry -- combined with greater pay disclosure and a sputtering pharmaceutical pipeline -- have led to a significant drop in doctors' financial ties to drugmakers.

Among the indicators of a declining link between physicians and industry:

• Commercial support for continuing medical education dropped 20%, from a little more than $1 billion in 2004 to $856 million in 2009, according to the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education.
• The amount drugmakers spent on drug rep details dropped 10%, from $6.9 billion in 2005 to $6.3 billion in 2009, the health data firm IMS Health reports.
• Nearly a quarter of physician practices refuse to see drug reps, according to an ongoing survey of 237,000 U.S. clinics conducted by SK&A, a prescriber-profiling firm. Nearly half of practices see reps only with an appointment, up from 40% in February 2009.

The latest evidence demonstrating the changing relationship between physicians and industry comes from a May 2009 survey of nearly 1,900 doctors whose results were published in the Nov. 8 Archives of Internal Medicine.

The article, a follow-up to a 2004 survey of more than 1,600 doctors, reports that -- across the board -- physicians are taking fewer gifts and payments from the pharmaceutical industry. Most doctors still accepted drug samples and free lunches from industry, but the number of physicians who took samples dropped 20% from 2004, while 13% fewer doctors ate industry-provided meals. About half as many physicians accepted industry-subsidized admissions to CME events or were reimbursed for meeting expenses such as food and lodging.

The percentage of physicians taking industry pay to serve on advisory boards and speakers' bureaus and as consultants fell by more than half. Consulting relationships declined the most, dropping 61% between 2004 and 2009. Fewer than 10% of doctors reported agreeing to any of these financial arrangements in 2009.

Source: "Physician Professionalism and Changes in Physician-Industry Relationships From 2004 to 2009,"
Archives of Internal Medicine, Nov. 8

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Pero...

"83.8% of all respondents reported some type of relationship with industry during the previous year"