Healthy Skepticism Library item: 2232

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

Japsen B.
Doctors ask to keep prescribing secret AMA data selling reaps $20 million
Chicago Tribune 2001 Dec 4

Full text:

SAN FRANCISCO — Fed up with drug industry pressure, some members of the American Medical Association would like the doctors group to look into legal remedies to protect the privacy of their prescribing habits.

Drugmakers routinely produce physician profiles using information from health-data companies and medical groups like the AMA itself. The information, in turn, is used to help manufacturers target their sales.

Doctors, gathered here for the AMA’s winter meeting, say such marketing programs based on physician profiles are an invasion of their privacy and lead to unwanted harassment by drug sales representatives pushing the industry’s latest—and often most costly— treatments.

Although AMA members passed a measure last year asking their organization to do something about drug industry “profiling” of doctors, they say the group’s leadership has ignored their pleas.

“The AMA hasn’t done anything to stop pharmaceutical companies from getting access to detailed information on physician prescribing patterns for specific drugs,” said Dr. Peter Lavine, a Washington, D.C., orthopedic surgeon. “I shouldn’t get letters from drug companies telling me how many prescriptions I have written for their competitor’s drug.”

But the AMA board of trustees, in a report being distributed this week to members, said it isn’t interested in taking legal action against drug companies. The AMA board said the information it provides to build prescriber profiles can help physicians, and it believes harassment from drugmakers is “isolated.”

Such data alerts doctors to drug recalls and other safety information, the board said in its analysis.

Furthermore, the AMA said that it could lose more than $20 million annually if it is forced to stop selling the data to drug companies.

At least one member doctor questioned whether the AMA would lose revenue, and if drug firms simply are threatening not to buy AMA data if the board follows through with seeking legal actions.

“Are we supplying motives for them to intimidate us?” asked Dr. George Fisher, an internist from Philadelphia. “We cannot have that.”

AMA officials said they plan to meet with undisclosed pharmaceutical companies to encourage their salespeople to use their data appropriately. The AMA also plans to develop best-practice guidelines for sales representatives.

Some doctors, however, believe the AMA is trying to avoid a conflict with the drug industry.

“The board is watering down what we wanted when they talk about best- practice guidelines,” Lavine said.