“Yes, it’s promotional, but it’s educational,” said Dr. Lawrence Glad, a Uniontown-area gynecologist who was hired as a speaker for three of the four drug companies last year and received $74,916, the third highest amount in southwestern Pennsylvania. “I think we have some critical skills for our patients beyond who bought my last bagel.”
Biz Journals
July 23rd, 2010 at 10:46AM
In my opinion, this is the a critical part of the article:
Medical oncologist Dr. Moses Raj, who practices at Allegheny General Hospital and received $18,000 from Lilly last year as a consultant and for conducting 13 informational sessions with doctors in the region, agreed.
“It doesn’t influence my prescribing,” he said. “If it fits the guidelines and fits the patients, I prescribe it. We’re just disseminating information.”
Yet, as the article details (and a wealth of research shows), these seminars have a big impact on prescribing patterns. And, it’s the worst kind of impact. While advertising to patients actually has the beneficial impact of generating some diagnosis of undiagnosed illnesses, the primary impact of the marketing to physicians is that it changes the market share and pricing power of drug companies within different classes of drugs and diseases.
July 24th, 2010 at 11:22AM
Shades of the Nemeroff defense – very like a CME.
July 25th, 2010 at 8:08AM
GTWMA, how are companies supposed to market drugs? Is it all supposed to be done with those folded-up white information sheets that are stuck to the sides of the bottles?