influence

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

GSK will cap payments to docs

Tracy Staton — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 11:15:52 -0400

GlaxoSmithKline is joining the queue of drugmakers that will unveil payments to doctors. The drugmaker said it will report the fees it pays to doctors and medical researchers. Plus, the company plans to cap payments to U.S. physicians and academics at $150,000 annually. CEO Andrew Witty (photo) told the Financial Times that the cap will be "without exception" and that all fees that change hands will be published.

As you know, there's been a groundswell of concern about Big Pharma's financial relationships with doctors and researchers. Congressional reps and patient advocates alike have been pushing for greater transparency about the amount of money drugmakers are shelling out. Anticipating federal legislation that would mandate disclosure, companies such as Eli Lilly and Merck have pledged to cough up the information voluntarily.

"It's appropriate that we have a limit on what we pay," Witty told the FT. "In the past, whatever has happened has happened, but in the future there will be strict adherence to these caps, which will be clearer to everybody."

- read the scoop in the FT
- see the Health Blog post

Lawsuit: Medtronic perks wooed docs

Tracy Staton — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 11:12:05 -0400

What do a Memphis gentlemen's club, trips to Alaska and ill-gotten patent royalties have in common? They're all perks that Medtronic gave to doctors, according to a lawsuit brought by a former Medtronic lawyer. The incentives were handed out by the company's $3 billion spinal devices unit, which has already been under investigation for its physician relationships.

As you know, Sen. Charles Grassley has been probing off-label use of Medtronic's spine products, examining whether those unapproved uses were driven by incentives given to doctors. The FDA has warned that off-label use of a Medtronic bone graft has led to potentially life-threatening side effects in dozens of patients.

The allegations were made in a lawsuit, filed in 2002 but only recently--and partially--unsealed. A heavily redacted copy of the complaint is the only version publicly available. But the Wall Street Journal got an unredacted copy, which alleged that kickbacks were "pervasive" in the spinal unit.

Medtronic says that it's changed many business practices since that lawsuit was filed. The company says it's "committed to reform and transparency in the industry."

- read the Wall Street Journal story

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

Stanford nixes industry-funded CME

Tracy Staton — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 10:59:43 -0400

The church-and-state separation of drugmakers and continuing medical education continues apace. Now it's Stanford's medical school that's refusing to take industry funding for specific CME programs or courses. The school won't accept money or in-kind help like equipment or supplies or services. Nor will it let for-profit CME companies that take industry money deliver their courses on campus.

Stanford joins a handful of other institutions that have curtailed their industry-funded CME recently. Memorial Sloan-Kettering cut itself off of industry funding for CME, the Wall Street Journal Health Blog reminds us, and Pfizer recently came at the problem from a different direction by saying it would no longer fund CME courses offered by for-profit companies.

What will Stanford accept? Well, it will take contributions to a pool of money that the university can then allocate as it sees fit. About half a dozen other med schools have created similar pools. It's an idea that could catch on; in fact, the CME accreditation body has been considering establishing a centralized pool for industry contributions. The money would be divvied up by medical societies.

- read the WSJ Health Blog post
- see the New York Times story

Study: Psychiatrists choose drugs over therapy

Christe Bruderlin-Nelson — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 10:27:06 -0400

A new study in the Archives of General Psychiatry seems to say incentives from managed care and more choices for psych drugs means psychiatrists increasingly turn to the prescription pad rather than the therapy couch.

While some type of psychotherapy is recommended for many conditions--including depression, bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder--visits did not include such therapy when the patient was under a managed care provider.

The study found that while psychiatry visits involved psychotherapy for 44 percent of visits in 1996 and 1997, only 29 percent of office-based visits did so in 2004 and 2005. Some say the fact that a few quick medication-monitoring visits pay much better than a longer psychotherapy session conducted in the same amount of time could be the reason for the switch, while others say the cornucopia of new meds on the market might be the cause.

- read the Pharmalot blog post
- see the study

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