pharma gifts

Do reporters fall for pharma swag?

Tracy Staton — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 11:05:29 -0500

Reporters looking for undue pharma influence might check around their own newsrooms. According to new research, journalists are exposed to the same sorts of conflicts of interest as are doctors and academic researchers.

Drugmakers sponsor journalism awards that carry cash prizes and all-expense-paid trips. Pharma companies fund journalism training and education programs and endow journalism professorships. And in a more subtle but everyday form of influence, reporters often rely on drug company PR folks to referrals to other sources, such as researchers or patients, who have been handpicked for their favorable views.

It shouldn't be a surprise, the researchers told the New York Times, that drugmakers try to influence reporters. They spend millions to get their messages out to the public and to doctors, "so it makes sense they would go after the media as well," said Dr. Steven Woloshin, one of the authors of the paper published in the British medical journal BMJ.

Many reporters eschew this sort of influence, however, journalism experts said. Freelancers and online journalists are probably more likely to enter the lucrative contests, such as Eli Lilly's awards for coverage of incontinence and cancer, they said. Most reporters "are good solid people who will avoid these conflicts, or they wouldn't have entered journalism to begin with,” the executive director of the Association for Health Care Journalists told the NYT.

- read the NYT article

Drug samples divert docs from generics

Tracy Staton — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 11:13:25 -0400

Here's a study that jumps smack into the debate over pharma freebies. Free drug samples cost uninsured patients more in the long run because they inhibit doctors' prescribing of generic drugs rather than branded varieties, the Wake Forest University study found.

As you know, some hospitals and group physician practices have stopped accepting samples altogether. Others have set up sample "pools" that allow reps to hand over the free meds to a central office that then distributes them, keeping the reps more than arm's length from the doctors themselves. This new study suggests that even the pooled approach may not keep the samples from influencing prescribing behavior. Just having those free meds on hand seems to encourage them toward those brands rather than toward generic alternatives.

- read the Wake Forest release
- check out the story at MedPage Today

Massachusetts gift bill now law

Tracy Staton — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 10:23:52 -0400

Despite a last-ditch lobbying effort by drugmakers, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick signed into law the controversial healthcare bill that would ban some types of pharma gifts to doctors--sports tickets and travel, for instance--and require all gifts and payments worth more than $50 to be publicly disclosed. Report

Massachusetts nukes doc-gift ban

Tracy Staton — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 08:27:05 -0400

It looks as if PhRMA's new marketing code has staved off legislative action in at least one state. Massachusetts House members, who have been debating an outright ban on industry gifts to doctors, stripped that provision from a bill making its way toward passage. The bill also lost its doctor-payment disclosure requirements, too. Instead, the measure will require drugmakers to adopt--drum roll, please--a code of conduct.

As you know, PhRMA proposed a new code last week that would keep reps from taking doctors out to restaurants and handing out pens, mugs, mouse pads, and the like in their offices. Other pharma execs can entertain physicians, though, and reps can bring in food when there's an educational program at a doctor's office or hospital.

State senators already had approved a version of the bill--a big effort to rein in healthcare costs, of which these marketing rules are just a part--that included the gift ban. But House members said they were "concerned that the Senate language would deny (doctors and researchers) the kind of information they need," according to the Boston Globe. Senators scoffed, however; one told the Globe, "If you are serious about taking on cost control, you have to take on the...sacred cows of the pharmaceutical industry."

- see the Globe story
- check out the Wall Street Journal Health Blog's take

New code bans logo-strewn tchotchkes

Tracy Staton — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 09:48:17 -0400

They're not the costliest items pharma gives doctors, but they're certainly the flashiest--and now they're no longer allowed. Under a new policy announced today by the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, drug reps won't be allowed to hand out logo-covered pens, prescription pads, mugs, clocks, mouse pads, and other freebies at physician's offices. That should cut down on the barrage of logos patients see when they walk into the office. The new marketing code will also ban individual reps from wining and dining doctors at restaurants.

But the code will allow reps to bring food along when they offer "informational presentations" in doctors' offices, according to PhRMA's press release. And it won't limit the millions of dollars spent on speaking and consulting fees--but will require companies to set their own internal limits and track those payments. The latter requirement could be helpful when/if federal legislation forces companies to disclose the amounts they're paying doctors.

Will this voluntary policy satisfy the industry's critics? Some, such as Sen. Herb Kohl, applauded the measure in the New York Times. Others called it a sham designed to forestall "doing anything that's serious." Given the amount of back-and-forth over pharma marketing in recent months, we expect PhRMA's conduct code to prompt plenty of debate.

- check out PhRMA's release
- read the New York Times article
- see the Wall Street Journal Health Blog's take

Americans want doc payments disclosed

Tracy Staton — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 11:03:12 -0400

Apparently, it's not just a few activist Congressional reps who want doctors to fess up to payments from pharmaceutical companies. A new poll found that Americans want to know whether their physicians are getting gifts or payments from drugmakers. The Prescription Project's survey showed that more than half of respondents thought they should know their doctors' relationships with pharma, but only a third said they'd be willing to ask directly.

Hence the move toward mandating disclosure, one version of which is making its way through the Senate as we speak. This survey showed that the public supports mandatory disclosure--by a margin of 2 to 1. That's not surprising, considering that half of the respondents believe doctors' prescribing habits are influenced by pharma gifts and payments.

- read the item at the Boston Globe
- check out the Pharmalot post

Harvard docs fail to report drug money

Tracy Staton — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 10:28:24 -0400

More proof that the cover-up causes more damage than the deed itself: Three Harvard researchers are under fire today for failing to disclose thousands in payments from drug companies. One of the three, Dr. Joseph Biederman, is a world-renowned child psychiatrist whose work helped touch off an explosion in the use of antipsychotics in children. He collected at least $1.6 million in consulting fees from drugmakers from 2000 to 2007, but didn't report much of his income to university officials as required by the school and by the National Institutes of Health, according to documents given to Congressional investigators.

Two reasons why this isn't just another story about doctors messing up their paperwork: One, if the NIH's newly launched investigation of the matter shows that Biederman and his colleagues ran afoul of disclosure rules, that could put millions in grants at risk. Two, because the non-disclosure was uncovered by Sen. Charles Grassley--and publicized by the same--it could further fuel Congress's attempts to regulate doc disclosure. And there's no guarantee that the sunshine legislation will end up in the pharma-approved form it's now taken.

- read the article in the New York Times

Doc disclosure gets boost from AZ, Merck

Tracy Staton — Fri, 23 May 2008 09:58:51 -0400

Drugmakers are climbing on the disclosure bandwagon. AstraZeneca and Merck have come out in favor of a bill requiring pharma and device-makers to report their payments to doctors, joining Eli Lilly, which gave the legislation a thumbs-up last week. Trade associations PhRMA (drugs) and Advamed (devices) have also expressed support.

The outpouring of support began after the bill's sponsors--Sen. Chuck Grassley and Sen. Herb Kohl--bumped up the minimum disclosure amount to $500 from $25. It also helped that they added language specifically preempting state disclosure rules--now in force in Vermont and Minnesota, and on the drawing board elsewhere.

Interestingly, Schering-Plough isn't among those backing the bill. In fact, the company expressly denied its support in a letter to the sponsors. The reason? That information might undermine the relationship between patients and doctors, the company says. We'll see if it changes its tune: The letter said execs "remain open to new information or points of view."

- check out the release from the Senate Special Committee on Aging
- read the item at the WSJ Health Blog
- see Pharmalot's take

Lilly backs doc-payment disclosure law

Wed, 14 May 2008 06:59:58 -0400

Let the sun shine in. A federal proposal requiring drug and device makers to disclose payments to doctors got a boost yesterday when Eli Lilly became the first Big Pharma to back it. Why fess up on gifts, honoraria, travel, and cash payments to physicians? "We believe that being transparent is one way to help re-establish" public confidence in the relationship between doctors and drug makers, according to Dr. Jack Harris, a Lilly VP.

That may be. But the real turning point may have come when lawmakers agreed to raise the threshold for disclosure to $500 from $25--quite a leap--and to apply the rules to all drug and device makers, rather than just companies with more than $100 million in annual sales. Fines were cut, also; now they'd be between $1,000 and $50,000 per violation rather than between $10,000 to $100,000. Plus, the legislation would preempt any state rules on disclosure.

- check out Lilly's statement on the move
- read the Associated Press story
- see the Indianapolis Star's coverage
- get the item from Pharmalot

NC hospital nixes drug-sample handouts

Tue, 13 May 2008 06:59:55 -0400

While drugmakers and the Massachusetts legislature duke it out over the "no pharma freebies" bill, a major North Carolina hospital system has told its docs not to pass on any freebies to patients. Carolinas Healthcare System's 600 physicians aren't allowed to give out drug samples anymore. Zero. Zilch. Nada.

Some patients and doctors "are violently opposed," the physician network's medical director acknowledged. But, he said, the new rule is designed to protect patients, limit liability, and--drum roll, please--decrease the influence of drug companies on prescribing practices. And some doctors in the group already had banned samples and cut back on drug rep visits. "Knowingly or not, it was affecting our practice... and it probably wasn't good for our patients," one said.

As a teaching hospital, Carolinas Medical Center is hardly in the vanguard in banning drug samples. Several others have done so in recent months. One of the motives: protecting tender medical students from undue pharma influence. In the Charlotte Observer's story on the change, one hospital pharmacy director summed up one train of thought: "Who do you want them to learn from--their (faculty) or the drug company representatives?"

- see the article in the Observer