The headline above appeared in the New York Times last week, and the online version has photos and video of food being delivered to doctors' offices. Everyone knows drug companies throw gifts and lunches at doctors to influence prescribing, but the Times staked out one doctors' office building to see how often it happened. It happened almost every day, with great volumes of food.
An excerpt:
"Anyone who thinks there is no such thing as a free lunch has never visited 3003 New Hyde Park Road, a four-story medical building on Long Island, where they are delivered almost every day. On a recent Tuesday, they began arriving around noon. Steaming containers of Chinese food were destined for the 20 or so doctors and employees of Nassau Queens Pulmonary Associates. The drug maker Merck paid the $258 bill.
A deliveryman carrying trays of gourmet sandwiches sashayed past patients at Advanced Internal Medicine. The bill showed that Takeda Pharmaceuticals was picking up the bill. The doctors in the group must have liked the sandwiches. The next day, the exact same delivery came in, paid for by Cephalon.
Free lunches like those at the medical building in New Hyde Park, N.Y., occur regularly at doctors’ offices nationwide, where delivery people arrive with lunch for the whole office, ordered and paid for by drug makers to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
Like the “free” vacation that comes with a time-share pitch attached, the lunches go down along with a pitch from pharmaceutical representatives hoping to bolster prescription sales. The cost of the lunches is ultimately factored in to drug company marketing expenses, working its way into the price of prescription drugs."
And, by the way, did you know that drug companies can deduct such marketing costs from their taxable income?
Some medical centers have now banned such free lunches, but they're in the minority.
One group fighting the practice is worthy of note for its goals and for its name: NoFreeLunch.org.
Posted by schwitz at August 2, 2006 07:52 AM | TrackBackUnfortunately, it is unlikely that the doctor is enjoying that "free lunch." It is probably his staff. The only incentive a doctor has left to hire a staff that can help him with scheduling, billing, patients, and the excess paperwork. Most good doctors don't have time for lunch, and are stuck in procedures all day, and probably do not come home until after their children are in their REM sleep. The author of the article has probably never worked at a hospital, or a busy clinic before, or had never been in healthcare. Stopping free lunches is not going to solve the problem, I would tend to look at the "pharmaceutical pensions and CEO retirement packages!"
Posted by: Michelle at August 4, 2006 11:31 AM