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Pharmaceutical companies spend more than $15 billion each year promoting prescription drugs in the United States. One-third of that amount is spent on "detailing" -- an industry term for drug company representatives' one-on-one promotion to doctors. A paper published April 24, 2007 in the Public Library of Science journal Medicine uncovers the tactics which pharmaceutical sales representatives, commonly called "drug reps," are trained to use in promoting drugs to prescribing physicians.

"It's my job to figure out what a physician's price is. For some it's dinner at the finest restaurants, for others it's enough convincing data to let them prescribe confidently and for others it's my attention and friendship... but at the most basic level, everything is for sale and everything is an exchange," stated former Eli Lilly drug rep Shahram Ahari.

Ahari, no longer a drug rep, co-wrote the paper with Adriane Fugh-Berman, associate professor of physiology and biophysics at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, D.C. The paper is based on conversations between Ahari and Fugh-Berman, who researches pharmaceutical marketing.

The writers report that drug reps are trained to gather as much personal information as possible about the doctors to whom they are promoting pharmaceuticals -- from birthdays and hobbies to religious affiliation. Drug reps are trained to note any detail that can be used to establish a personal relationship with a doctor. Ahari stated, "During training, I was told, when you're out to dinner with a doctor, 'The physician is eating with a friend. You are eating with a client.'"

Drug reps offer gifts, and not just mugs and pens inscribed with drug names. "The highest prescribers receive better presents," wrote Ahari. Pharmaceutical companies rank doctors according to the number of prescriptions they write -- from 1 at the low end to 10 for high prescribers. According to Ahari, "Some reps said their 10s might receive unrestricted 'educational' grants so loosely restricted that they were the equivalent of a cash gift."

The source of the 1-to-10 ranking data is prescription tracking. So-called "health information organizations" (including IMS Health, Dendrite and Verispan) purchase prescription records from pharmacies. According to the authors, IMS Health buys records of about 70 percent of prescriptions filled by community pharmacies. Pharmaceutical companies purchase the records and use them to identify high-prescribing doctors.

How the AMA earns millions by helping drug companies buy influence

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Related Articles: • Interview with Jamie Reidy, former Viagra sales rep and author of "Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman" • The great direct-to-consumer prescription drug advertising con: how patients and doctors alike are easily influenced to demand dangerous drugs • Why Doctors are Idiots: 150 Years of Disatrous Advice on Children's Health (satire)	Take Action: Support NaturalNews.com Email this article to a friend Share this article on: NewsVine | digg | del.icio.us Permalink to this article: http://www.NaturalNews.com/021956_drug_reps_doctors_drug_rep.html Reprinting this article: Non-commercial use OK, cite NaturalNews.com with clickable link. Embed article link: (copy HTML code below): <a href = "http://www.NaturalNews.com/021956_drug_reps_doctors_drug_rep.html">Drug reps use psychological tactics to successfully influence doctors' prescribing habits</a>