Fancy dinners for doctors are supposed to be a thing of the past for the pharmaceutical industry. The makers of medicines have been encouraged for more than a year to fete physicians only at modest restaurants to avoid the appearance of a conflict.
But physicians are still dining well on the tab of big pharmaceutical companies, suggests David Grande, a young, Philadelphia-trained physician.
Grande, who recently finished his medical residency at the University of Pennsylvania, recorded the restaurants that 150 fellow residents were invited to in a six-month period. He used the Philadelphia Zagat guide to determine priciness, and found that his colleagues were being invited to restaurants that were 42 percent more expensive than the Zagat average. Pharmaceutical companies were inviting residents once a week to the likes of Susanna Foo, Brasserie Perrier, and Kansas City Prime.
"The spirit of the guidelines
being flouted," said Grande, whose findings with Penn researcher Kevin Volpp were published yesterday in a letter to the Journal of the American Medical Association. "Things have not been corrected to the point it needs to be if the medical profession and the pharmaceutical industry are really serious about preserving the public's trust."<snip>
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/business/6685656.htm