Greedy Trial Lawyer
Big Pharma's Mining Operations
Category: Seeing Clearly Now
What do cowboys, computerized dossiers the A.M.A., and prescription drugs have in common? After you read this New York Times article you will know and will understand how Big Pharma and Big Medicine do business. Welcome to quality and affordable medical care, the American way.
Doctors Object to Gathering of Drug Data [Data Mining]Although virtually unknown to consumers, the information has long been considered the most potent weapon in pharmaceutical sales -- computerized dossiers showing which physicians are prescribing what drugs. Armed with such data, a drug sales representative can pressure a doctor to write more prescriptions for a name-brand medicine or fewer orders for a competitor's drug.
But now a rebellion is under way by some doctors, who consider the data-gathering an intrusion that feeds overzealous sales practices among the nation's estimated 90,000 drug company representatives. Public officials are also weighing in. A vote on a state bill to clamp down on the practice is scheduled for today in New Hampshire, and similar bills have been introduced in other states, including Arizona and West Virginia.
"It's the most powerful tool a drug rep has, for sure," said Jamie Reidy, a former drug salesman who was fired last year by Eli Lilly & Company after writing "Hard Sell," a humorous exposé of the pharmaceutical industry. Mr. Reidy said the pharmaceutical representatives received updated prescription data every two weeks. The information also sometimes characterizes each physician's prescribing patterns, Mr. Reidy said.
For example, "early prescribers" -- also known among drug representatives as "cowboys," according to Mr. Reidy -- are those doctors who start prescribing a drug as soon as it comes to market. If you are a drug sales representative, "you go to see that doctor in the first week," Mr. Reidy said.
State Representative Cindy Rosenwald of New Hampshire, lead sponsor of her state's bill, said she was motivated partly by high Medicaid drug costs, which she said she believed had been driven up by the pharmaceutical industry's success in coaxing doctors to prescribe expensive brand-name drugs.
The leading compiler and vendor of prescription data is IMS Health, a publicly traded company based in Fairfield, Conn., that had revenue last year of $1.75 billion. IMS and its competitors gather the data through contracts with retail pharmacy chains and companies that manage drug plans for insurers, then sell it to pharmaceutical companies.
IMS and its competitors -- the main ones are Verispan, Dendrite International and a Dutch company, Wolters Kluwer -- also pay the A.M.A. for access to its repository of information on approximately one million doctors who are graduates of American medical schools, as well as foreign medical school graduates licensed in the United States.
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