Senate Bill To Create Federal Academic Detailing
15 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // March 10th, 2008 // 5:57 pm
You’ve heard about the program in Pennsylvania, for instance? The state funds a group of so-called academic detailers who, essentially, try to counter industry sales reps by providing nothing but straight talk and informative handouts created by a team of doctors. Now, the Senate Special Committee on Aging will hold a hearing on Wednesday to consider a federal academic detailing program.
“The industry’s educational outreach is essentially a marketing program, and evidence shows that doctors’ prescribing patterns can be heavily influenced by pharmaceutical sales representatives,” according to a statment issued this afternoon by the committee. “The hearing will consider the implications of creating a ‘federal academic detailing’ program, which would provide physicians and other prescribers with an objective source of unbiased information on all prescription drugs, based on scientific research.”
Not only will there be hearing, but Herb Kohl, the Wisconsin Democrat who chairs the committee, and Dick Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois, plan to introduce a bill this spring to create a federal program. The move comes after the committee held a hearing last June about the relationship between docs and pharma, and the recently introduced Physician Payment Sunshine Act, which require drug and device makers and biotechs to to disclose the amount of money they give to doctors through payments, gifts, honoraria, travel and other means.
Among those scheduled to testify on Wednesday are Shahram Ahari, a former Lilly sales rep; Jerry Avorn, a Harvard Medical School professor credited with initiating academic detailing; Allan Coukell, director of Policy and Strategic Communications of The Prescription Project Group; Nora Dowd Eisenhower, Secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Aging, and Ambrose Carrejo, assistant director of Pharmaceutical Contracting and Strategic Purchasing at Kaiser Permanente.
Dan
To reiterate from previous posts on this site, there are benefits with this type of detailing, which include:
A more complete clinical picture.
Treatment regimens possibly discussed without the limitations imposed by big pharma.
Thier medical background should add credibility to being an asset to the prescriber.
No more begging doctors to accept non-sample inducements.
No overly dressed reps with disillusioned egos.
What may I be missing?
Doc
Great idea, some balanced promotional activity would be a refreshing change.
Paul
What a waste of money
James
Let’s quit all this incrementalism and do what our wise government is angling for–tax everyone at 100%, and redistribute that money into programs that the philosopher-kings deem important.
You can’t create all these programs, no matter how well-intentioned, without spending taxpayer money.
Doctors are smart enough to do their own research. Why do they need a roving government “truth squad” to feed them info? If they don’t want sales reps in their office, they can kick them out.
david
This was something pioneered by Jerry Avorn and Steve Soumerai at Harvard, with Wayne Ray at Vanderbilt. Their studies were two decades ago, and they were quite successful at reducing polypharmacy without notable impact on QoL and the like. Hardly the waste of money some suggest.
Justice in Michigan
Agree with David. There are several models of such programs, including those that provide CME, and thus will pay for much of themselves.
Obviously, docs can kick out these folks as easily as reps if they take libertarian offense.
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Pam Wetzel
Maybe we need a similar group of people to offset the influence lobbyists have on our elected officials.
HorusCat
Pam,
I’m biased, since I’m a rep, but I agree with you. The irony and hypocrisy is almost too much to bear. While billions are spend on influencing our elected officials, they are going to use more of my tax money to essentially lobby doctors.