Healthy Skepticism Library item: 5354

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

Steinbrook R.
For Sale: Physicians' Prescribing Data
New England Journal of Medicine 2006 Jun 29354:(26):2745-7
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/354/26/2745

Abstract:

“Since the early 1990s, health care information companies have bought
electronic records of prescriptions from pharmacies and other sources and
linked them with information about doctors that is licensed from the
Physician Masterfile of the American Medical Association (AMA). These
information companies, the largest of which is IMS Health of Fairfield,
Connecticut, have then compiled and sold individual physicians’ prescribing
data to pharmaceutical manufacturers. The business is lucrative. But a
growing number of physicians have rebelled after becoming aware that drug
companies have access to their data – in some cases because zealous sales
agents have confronted them with their prescribing histories.1 The abuses
have occurred despite “best practice guidelines” from the AMA that include
admonitions that industry and its representatives should keep prescribing
data confidential, that companies should prohibit disclosure “by sales
representatives to any other party,” and that “the use of prescribing data
to overtly pressure or coerce physicians to prescribe a particular drug is
absolutely an inappropriate use…”

Keywords:
MeSH Terms: American Medical Association/economics Commerce/legislation & jurisprudence* Confidentiality*/legislation & jurisprudence Disclosure/ethics Disclosure/legislation & jurisprudence* Drug Industry/ethics Drug Industry/legislation & jurisprudence* Humans Legislation, Drug Marketing/ethics Marketing/legislation & jurisprudence Physician's Practice Patterns/legislation & jurisprudence Physicians Prescriptions, Drug* State Government United States

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