There are signs that drug marketing is beginning to change, as the FDA focuses on off-label use and some of the big pharmas cut back on their sales forces. This may well be as part of big pharma’s efforts to defuse some of the harsh criticism leveled at them by physicians, consumer groups, and health plans frustrated with pharma’s aggressive marketing tactics.
David Wilson’s Health Business blog notes that Wyeth and Pfizer have both announced plans to cut sales staff. The reasons are:
1. “Mirrored sales teams –the practice of sending multiple sales reps to the same doctor to talk about the same drug– are causing a backlash from doctors and also making it hard to measure the effectiveness of individual sales people
2. There is little new to talk about –because of fewer product launches and in the case of Wyeth the curtailment of uses for its hormone replacement therapy. (Could it be that the more a doctor knows about hormone replacement therapy the less they will prescribe?)
3. The availability of efficient, effective outsourced sales forces available from Ventiv, Innovex and PDI have enabled pharma companies to reduce fixed costs.”
The issue of pharmaceutical detailing has been extensively addressed in DB’s MedRants, a highly entertaining and informative blog authored by physician Robert Centor. Centor has also commented on the recent decision by Bristol-Myers-Squibb to impose “a ban on advertising its new drugs to consumers in their first year on the market, adopting voluntary restrictions that go further than what is anticipated in an industrywide advertising code to be announced next month.” Centor notes
“The optimist in me hopes that the outcries from physicians has influenced their policy. The skeptic in me believes that they understand the DTC drug advertising carries both risks and benefits. Big Pharma has a major image problem. TV drug ads generally hurt their image. ”
As to the issue of off-label use, this is a significant area of concern for many payers, including workers compensation insurers. In my firm’s “Second Annual Survey of Prescription Drug Management in Workers’ Compensation”, payer respondents noted off-label use as a significant concern. Typical was the use of Actiq as a pain med for musculoskeletal pain. Actiq is a brand drug used for break through pain associated with cancer; thus its use in workers comp is the very definition of “off-label”.
What does this mean for you?
If big pharma is finally getting the message, that bodes well for a “decrease in the rate of increase” in pharmaceutical inflation. However, these companies are the ultimate capitalist organizations (that is not intrinsically bad) so they will seek to maximize their returns. And we all know who pays for those “returns”.
Jun
21
