Greedy Trial Lawyer
Drug Reps With Spreadsheets Welcomed By Oncologists
Category: Seeing Clearly Now
In my post yesterday, Oncologists Keep Their Eye On Profits, the question was whether oncologists were uniquely focused on profits among all the medical specialists. PharmaGossip provides more evidence for us to consider. When drug company reps are showing up at oncologists' offices with spreadsheets instead of drug samples and clinical studies it is hard to imagine anything but dollar signs in the heads of these practitioners.
Cancer - Big Pharma's (and oncologists') last gold rush
Industry documents that have emerged in a federal civil lawsuit in Boston show that big pharmaceutical companies sometimes calculated to the penny the profits that doctors could make from their drugs. Sales representatives shared those profit estimates with doctors and their staffs, the documents show.In one PowerPoint presentation from 2000, a Bristol-Myers Squibb executive told employees that oncologists' biggest concern was "Reimbursement Today, Reimbursement Tomorrow, Reimbursement!"
Dr. Robert Geller, an oncologist who worked in private practice from 1996 to 2005 before leaving to join a biotechnology company, said that cancer doctors knew the profits they could make and in some cases would change treatment regimens or offer unnecessary care to make extra money.
"It's clear that physicians stopped making decisions based on what made scientific or clinical sense in lieu of what made better business sense," Dr. Geller said.
While many of the documents in the lawsuit remain sealed, the exhibits used in the first trial are part of the public record. They show that representatives for the companies brought spreadsheets to oncologists' offices to show doctors how much they could make.
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