Do doctors only get paid for the work they do in their office?

Question

Do doctors only get paid for the work they do in their office? Or do they get money from pharmaceutical companies if they use their medicine? My assumption was they only get paid for office work.

Answer 1

they do not get paid for using a specific drug, they are supposed to use the drugs that are best for the patient, good luck

Answer 2

They shouldn't get paid for prescribing certain medications; that's unethical and (I believe) possibly illegal. That doesn't mean that it never happens, but it should not be considered appropriate under any circumstances.

However, some doctors do accept perks and freebies from drug companies, and the reasons/actions of the doctor determine if it's ethical or not.

F'rinstance: if your doctor has a history of prescribing a certain ointment for burns, and the drug company rep says "Hey, you buy a lot of this from us in the big bottles, here's a bunch of samples", and the doctor gives those samples out for free to patients who have burns too small to justify purchasing a full bottle -- that's pretty darned ethical.

Or: if your doctor has a history of prescribing a certain ointment for burns, and a drug company offers him samples of a different product to try, and he passed those out for free to patients with small burns to see if it's effective -- a bit unethical, as he's basically performing an informal drug trial on his patients, but probably no big deal.

Then again: if your doctor has a history of prescribing a certain ointment for burns, and a drug company offers him a trip to aruba for his family if he starts buying a certain amount of their competing product, and so he does -- and starts prescribing it for other uses in order to meet his purchase quota -- that's unethical by anyone's standards.