Healthy Skepticism Library item: 13139

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Publication type: news

May J.
Big Pharma turns to athletic trainers to keep departing sales reps in line
The New Jersey Star-Ledger 2008 Mar 9
http://www.nj.com/business/ledger/index.ssf?/base/business-1/1205041052201800.xml&coll=1&thispage=1

Full text:

When a big pharmaceutical company fires a sales rep, it counts on hired guns like Alex Brown to clean up the mess.

Brown is an unlikely foot soldier for Big Pharma — he’s better known as the longtime athletic trainer for Oklahoma University’s basketball team.

But in between practices, road trips and physical therapy sessions, he moonlights for Cegedim Dendrite, a company that provides support services for the pharmaceutical industry. And he’s not the only one: A small army of fellow sports trainers work second jobs policing prescription-drug samples and serving as “close-out” wranglers for drugmakers, collecting laptop computers and other company gear when a salesperson leaves the business.

The basketball playoff season has just begun, so Brown’s life is as hectic as it gets right now. He’s scrambling to make sure his beloved Sooners are healthy enough to contend for a slot in the NCAA tournament, otherwise known as March Madness. The 65 squads who make the cut will be announced in a week.

“It really is a maddening time,” said Brown, 52, who calls “selection Sunday” his favorite time of the year. “I enjoy it more than Christmas Day.”

Brown’s biggest headache is an injury to star freshman Blake Griffin, but he has more than sports medicine on his plate. After a team flight returned from a game against Nebraska at 2 a.m. recently, Brown was back on the road six hours later to squeeze in some visits for Cegedim Dendrite, a French company whose U.S. operations are based in Bedminster.

By midmorning, he had dashed off five inventories of drug sample supplies, the freebies sales reps dole out to doctors to promote the use of new medicines.

Although Brown handles the occasional “close-out,” recovering company equipment from cashiered salespeople, the bulk of his part-time work is sample inventories. Auditors have to make sure the drugs are properly accounted for and safely locked away in climate-controlled storage, which can be in a salesperson’s home or a rented locker.

“Most of the time, it’s easier for the reps to do it earlier in the morning,” he said. “That’s when drug companies want you to do it, so they’re not missing (sales) calls.”

UNUSUAL TEAM

Brown represents an odd intersection of need, opportunity and personal ties between the drug industry and athletic trainers. Cegedim Dendrite wanted a reliable, part-time work force to ensure its customers’ sales teams are kept on their toes. Trainers fit the bill because they generally have good people skills, are steeped in health care and can use the extra cash.

What began as an experiment 15 years ago with a handful of trainers is now a firmly entrenched business model. Some 95 percent of Cegedim Dendrite’s “sample management specialists” are athletic trainers, drawn from a network of 2,000 people who work in sports medicine at the high school, college or pro sports level.

One is Ron Linfonte, the head sports trainer for St. John’s University, whose career reaches back to the glory years of Lou Carnesecca, Chris Mullin and Walter Berry. Linfonte grew up in Millburn and graduated from Seton Hall, a phys ed major who loved athletics but couldn’t crack any varsity teams except for golf.

“I had a great interest in sports,” he said. “If you’re not good enough to play but want to stay involved, athletic training is the next best thing.”

When he started almost three decades ago, athletic trainers could still rely on the off-season to line up side jobs. Linfonte worked the occasional golf tournament until the trainer’s job started to become a 365-day proposition.

“Back then, college sports was a little laid-back, with summers off,” he said. “Now, with all the college teams, you keep your kids here all year.”

Having a part-time job that can be shoehorned around regular work hours has been a big help, Linfonte said. He’s developed long-standing relationships with sales reps in Queens and Suffolk County, N.Y., many of whom are fans of St. John’s.

That connection helps when he has to deal with “close-outs,” one of the more unpleasant parts of the job. When a salesperson is fired or leaves the business, auditors have to pick up the rep’s company laptop, sample supplies, corporate ID card and other equipment.

GOOD TRAINING

District managers from drug companies used to have to perform those pickups themselves, but it works better to have a neutral party, said Bill Buzzeo, a Cegedim Dendrite executive whose father founded the sample auditing unit. The business was originally known as BuzzeoPDMA before it was bought out by New Jersey-based Dendrite, which itself was acquired by Cegedim last year.

Linfonte said “close-outs” are not unlike the “exit physicals” trainers sometimes have to perform for injured athletes. The inventory part of the job is also similar to trainers’ work, he said.

The sample-management business started in the early 1990s, when tighter regulatory requirements were put in place for handling the drugs, Buzzeo said. Drug companies didn’t want to waste sales managers’ time with the inventories, so they contracted the work out. About 50 companies, ranging from small drugmakers to some of the world’s largest pharmaceutical firms, use the service now, according to Cegedim Dendrite.

In the early days, the business hired people off the street. Salespeople complained, however, when auditors showed up in T-shirts or had gruff attitudes.

The younger Buzzeo had worked for a time himself as a trainer, including a stint with the Philadelphia Eagles. Through that connection, the head trainer of the Eagles — the late Otho Davis — became a consultant to his father’s business and broached the idea of using his colleagues as auditors.

“He had some very strong values — hard work, doing the right thing,” Buzzeo said. “The athletes loved him. The coaches respected him. He was a very stand-up guy.”

Davis also had a fierce pride in his profession, and was a driving force behind the founding of a national association for trainers. In the beginning, he hand-picked trainers to do the pharmaceutical compliance work, and his imprint remains in the business’ dress code.

“We’re professional all the way — shirt and tie, no sneakers, no sweats, no jeans,” Linfonte said.

AMPLE OPPORTUNITY

Brown, the Oklahoma trainer, grew up in North Carolina and knew Davis since he was 12, when Davis was head trainer for Duke. He was one of the first to be assigned inventory work, and now, with his ex-wife Glenda, covers the entire state of Oklahoma for Cegedim Dendrite. They each make about 200 sales rep visits a year, and pull in about $17,000 each in extra cash.

Cegedim Dendrite says the average trainer’s compensation for sample auditing is $5,000 to $7,000.

Brown said the work has helped him become a better trainer because he’s built up a broader knowledge of medications.

“It’s been educational for me,” he said, adding he wants to continue the work after he retires as a trainer in 10 to 15 years.

For now, of course, his training responsibilities take precedence. The other day, when Griffin was undergoing surgery to repair torn cartilage in his knee, Brown had to cancel four inventories with salespeople. Three of the four were Sooners fans, he said, so it wasn’t a problem.

“This guy, he’s my No. 1 priority right now,” Brown said. “Winning is the most powerful drug I’ve known. Losing is the second most powerful drug. One will make you feel great. The other will almost kill you.”

Still, he drove 140 miles round-trip to Duncan, Okla., on Friday for another series of inventories. He said the university has been understanding about the side job, in part because of the demanding, unpredictable work of being a trainer.

“We’re on 24-hour call, basically,” he said. “My phone could ring at any time. I always try to answer it, and if I don’t, I try to call back. Because of that, they have to give us some flexibility in our time schedule as well.”