Healthy Skepticism Library item: 1396
Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.
Publication type: news
Chin T.
Some doctors want payment for e-detailing: Physicians like being able to view drug marketing information on their own schedules, but some would need to be paid to do it again.
American Medical News 2003 Aug 18
http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2003/08/18/bisc0818.htm
Full text:
Physicians who participated in an e-detailing study found the online experience educational and convenient, but 39% of them would have to be paid to do it again, according to a survey by Forrester Research Inc. E-detailing is the practice of physicians going online to view pharmaceutical sales representative presentations, order drug samples and see other materials, as if a sales rep actually had come to the office.
The survey found that doctors “find value in e-detailing, but a lot of them think that the honorarium is the main reason to do it,” said Elizabeth W. Boehm, an analyst with the Cambridge, Mass.-based market research company.
“A lot of doctors felt this was ultimately professional time that they were spending, even if they did e-detailing in the evening” after office hours, she said.
To conduct the survey, Forrester asked several e-detailing firms to recruit physicians, lining up 2,237 doctors. Of those, 81% or 1,820 physicians did e-details with pharmaceutical companies. Physicians did not receive any honorarium for their participation, Boehm said.
Sixty-one percent of the e-detailing physicians said they would do it again without any strings attached, while 39% said they would do it again only if they were offered an honorarium, preferably cash.
Forty percent said honoraria are the reason they do e-details, 55% said honoraria would sway their decision to complete one e-detail over another, and fewer than 1% said they oppose honoraria on principle.
Michael S. Goldrich, MD, chair of the AMA Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs, was not surprised by the results, saying that Forrester’s data “support a lot of previous data that relates to conventional [face-to-face] detailing and pharmaceutical events.”
Detailing can be a valuable educational experience for physicians, but they should keep in mind the AMA’s ethical guidelines relating to gifts from pharmaceutical companies, Dr. Goldrich said.
Under the guidelines, doctors may accept noncash gifts worth less than $100 as long as the gifts are medically relevant and can potentially benefit patients, he said.
Over the past three years, physicians have come under fire for accepting cash and expensive gifts, including expensive meals, from drug companies, leading the AMA and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, a drug industry group, to revise or issue guidelines for interaction between doctors and drug companies.
The long-standing but controversial marketing practices also have drawn scrutiny from the federal government.
Last April, the U.S. Office of the Inspector General warned that some industry practices, including gifts and consulting arrangements, might violate federal anti-kickback laws.
About 200,000 physicians will do e-details this year, up from 140,000 in 2002 and 40,000 in 2001, said Mark Bard, president of Manhattan Research LLC, New York.
A major reason for the increase is that drug companies have gotten good results from detailing online, Bard said. Another reason is that doctors were paid for going online, raising the question of whether the number of doctors doing e-details will continue to grow as companies seek to comply with AMA and PhRMA guidelines.
“Are there some physicians who only did it for the money? Of course,” Bard said. “In a world where reimbursement starts to decrease significantly and takes other forms, drug companies will lose physicians who were just out for the money. But this is not something where you have to pull nails to get someone to do this. There are actually cases where someone will do this and will actually raise their hands and say, ‘I want to do this for free.’ “
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
Weblink
AMA’s Ethical Guidelines for Gifts to Physicians From Industry
(www.ama-assn.org/go/ethicalgifts)
PhRMA Code on Interactions with Healthcare Professionals, in pdf
(www.phrma.org/publications/policy//2002-04-19.391.pdf)
Office of Inspector General Compliance Program Guidance for Pharmaceutical Manufacturers, in pdf
(oig.hhs.gov/fraud/docs/complianceguidance/042803pharmacymfgnonfr.pdf)
