In today’s Chicago Tribune, Bruce Japsen reports on a recent study that sheds additional light on just how pervasively cozy the relationship between physicians and pharmaceutical companies has become in this country:

Doctors refuse to take bitter no-gift medicine

Whether it be Subway sandwiches for the office staff or reimbursement for continuing education, gifts showered upon doctors by drug- and medical device-makers have become so pervasive that they are a standard part of virtually every U.S. physician’s practice.

Despite self-policing initiatives launched by organized medical groups and the drug and device makers to curb the cozy relationship between physicians and industry, 94 percent “or virtually all” physicians have at least one type of relationship with the drug industry, according to a study scheduled to be published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The study indicates that those self-policing initiatives are not always followed.

Consumers should care about such relationships because drug companies tend to market the latest and most expensive brand names, and gift-giving can influence prescribing behavior and therefore how much Americans spend on prescriptions, the authors said.

Drug marketing and conflicts of interest between doctors and medical product companies have come under congressional scrutiny because of their impact on costs and because of safety issues involving heavily promoted drugs, including Vioxx, the painkiller that was pulled from the market in 2004, nearly two years after studies showed it increased risks of heart attacks.

“Relationships with industry are a fundamental part of the way medicine is practiced today,” said the study’s lead researcher and co-author, Eric Campbell, an associate professor of medicine at the Institute for Health Policy at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

Campbell said consumers have reason to be concerned about the study’s findings. [full text]