At week’s end, the drugmaker will introduce a marketing shake-up and flesh out its ‘New Commercial Model,’ according to sources. The gist of this initiative is to place more emphasis on major therapeutic areas. A Merck spokesperson was unavailable for comment last night.

Adam Schechter, the president of US Human Health, foreshadowed the effort nearly two weeks ago at the Goldman Sachs healthcare conference, where he told the crowd that Merck’s “US Human Health has the potential to become the most efficient commercial operation in the industry.” You can see his presentation here.

Merck sales reps are bracing for teleconference calls this morning. A quick look at slides 5 and 21 tells you why. The first one shows that industry spending on detailing is flat, but still high - and inefficient. The other slide underscores that Merck intends to spend much less on physician promotion and direct selling. In fact, the expense is forecast to drop by 9 percent.

Meanwhile, the drugmaker has yet to announce Peter Loescher’s replacement. You may recall that he unexpectedly resigned last month to become ceo at Siemens, leaving Merck ceo Dick Clark with the sudden need to name a new No. 2 just a year after Loescher arrived.

There’s speculation that Clark is eyeing Maggie McGlynn, who’s headed Merck’s red-hot vaccines unit for the past two years. However, she does come with some baggage - the Gardasil controversy that hurt Merck’s image over its aggressive campaign to line up state legislators to push for mandated HPV vaccines.