The American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) recently held its annual meeting in Chicago, Illinois. The conference underscored how “new limits on free gifts to doctors have hit the ubiquitous free lattes and coffee seen at major medical meetings,” according to MSNBC.
While “the conference exhibit floor still featured massive information booths from cancer drugmakers like Roche Holding AG , Bristol-Myers Squibb Co and Amgen, Inc., the days of shopping bags laden with pricey goodies are long gone.” Some companies are still offering “coffee or candy with no strings attached.” For Pfizer, Inc. however, they require doctors to swipe their registration cards and warn that physicians from Minnesota and Vermont are prohibited from imbibing.” Pfizer also warns in a sign in front of the coffee machine that it may provide the names of coffee-drinking doctors to regulators.
With regards to international doctors, “exhibit booths at ASCO also have to strictly separate medical information given out, under guidelines set by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which can also mean coffee only for doctors with foreign ID badges.”
Such policies are unnecessary considering “many companies said they would stop giving out small gifts such as pens and flash drives as part of new voluntary guidelines from the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA). The trade group has also banned more costly gifts like trips to resorts, and called for companies that pay for medical education at conferences to leave the content to outside experts since 2002.
As a result, the kind of practices seen at ASCO is “absurd,” according to Len Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer at the American Cancer Society, because there is no way these restrictions will “solve the issue of healthcare in this country.” We need to be encouraging and enticing doctors to attend these voluntary events because they will benefit patients and society tremendously. For doctors who use their nights and weekends, while paying for hotel rooms, travel, and other expenses, a cup of coffee to keep a busy day going is the least a conference can do. And it’s not like many Americans have a problem with that.
For example, a recent poll showed that almost 80% of people felt that a cup of coffee wasn't going to influence a doctor to prescribe a certain medication. Clearly then, the growing concern that undisclosed financial ties, such as cups of coffee or meals, have lead to increases in healthcare costs is misguided to say the least.
These events are crucial for doctors to share experience, data and knowledge with their peers to help establish networks that can collaborate in ways to help patients in particular disease areas.
If critics have such a problem with free coffee, perhaps doctors who attend these conferences should have their patients bring them a cup. Surely, any patient who understood the impact such events have in the future abilities of their doctor to treat and diagnosis their disease, they would gladly pay for a lifetime of coffee if it meant a lifetime they had to live.