This is a bit suprising, if only because New Jersey is home to so many drugmakers and has a reputation for not wanting to offend the industry. In fact, the Garden State regularly brags about being ‘the nation’s medicine chest.’

Nonetheless, the state attorney general, Anne Milgram, has formed a task force to investigate how docs and patients are affected by the ubiquitous practice of giving gifts and fees for research, consulting and speaking. The force will also look at how gifts contribute to a doc’s knowledge about meds, although there is no enforcement power yet attached to the effort.

The new Advisory Task Force on Physician Compensation will study ways to prevent and identify abuses, which may include publicly disclosing data, putting limits on payments that docs can accept, or requiring docs to disclose those goodies to their patients. “As regulators of health care professionals in New Jersey, we want to ensure that patient care is guided by the unbiased exercise of the physician’s best judgment,” Milgram says in a statement.

To date, just four states - Vermont, Maine, Minnesota and West Virginia - and Washington, DC, have passed laws requiring docs to report payments and goodies received from drug and device makers. The task force will review those laws as part of the project.

A national survey reported in the New England Journal of Medicine in April found 83 percent of doctors responding let drug and device makers buy them food and drinks, while 28 percent accepted consulting or lecture fees and 7 percent took free tickets to games and other events, the Associated Press reminds us.

The 16-member panel, which will hold its first meeting on Wednesday, includes various family docs; execs from state hospitals, Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey and the NJ Medical Society, and members of the state’s Board of Examiners, which oversees licensing. Also on board is Lisa Goldman, Pfizer’s assistant general counsel; Becton-Dickinson vp Dean Paranicas, and Murray Kopelow, who heads the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education.

The medical examiners board this summer for the first time began asking doctors in the state whether they have received gifts and other benefits from drug or medical device makers, the AP notes. The task force is supposed to help develop follow-up questions and determine whether new regulations or policy reforms are needed.