More drug detailing tactics:
“It’s my job to figure out what a physician’s price is. For some it’s dinner at the finest restaurants, for others it’s enough convincing data to let them prescribe confidently and for others it’s my attention and friendship… but at the most basic level, everything is for sale and everything is an exchange,” stated former Eli Lilly drug rep Shahram Ahari.
Related posts:
- More drug rep confessions
- Drug reps getting cranky
- Drug reps are suing their employers
- How drug reps see doctors
- A bad day for New Hampshire drug reps
- How drug reps deal with difficult doctors
- Big Pharma is turning to the developing world
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I nominate this item for the first annual DUH! Award
From the article:
“To establish the identity of the prescribing doctors, pharmaceutical companies rely on the American Medical Association (AMA), which maintains a Physician Masterfile on every U.S. physician. Citing the New England Journal of Medicine, the authors wrote, “In 2005, database product sales, including an unknown amount from licensing Masterfile information, provided more than $44 million to the AMA.”
Thanks for reminding me why I will never be a member of the AMA again.
Wait! You mean that the minor deities are ***gasp*** just like the rest of us! Oh no!
Why I don’t talk to drug reps any more. It isn’t that they are bad people, just that they are really just sales people and are more and more just manipulating, not “detailing”. I hate being sold.
And the samples were just training my patients to beg.
Anon 5:04 has got soem SERIOUS Daddy issues…
It depends on the area. The drug reps are pretty irritating; they really have nothing to offer and their hamhanded attempts at ingratiation/manipulation just make me sad. These days most of them tend to be fresh out of college and their Pfizer how-to-ingratiate script is all too easily read.
The equipment companies are better – obviously it’s a little harder to influence buying decisions for that. Sadly they’re practically the only way to get educational things funded these days. We’ve got a pretty good relationship with one of the big companies and the reps are good about helping us send people back and forth for preceptorships to learn new techniques. The hospital is really the one with all the buying power anyway, so I just smile and nod.
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