Data Mining, Detailers and Physicians: Sub-culture of back room deals

IMS Health vs. Ayotte

Seeking Supreme Court review is IMS Health, challenging a decision by the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit which upheld a New Hampshire law that restricts the commercial use of physician information about physician prescribing habits.

Okay, it's been ruled okay to limit the data mining that IMS Health and others conduct which sorts through information of filled prescriptions and ultimately identifies the doctors who prescribe medication. Patient identity supposedly is not discernible but DOCTOR information is identifiable.

The issue is the cost of pharmaceutical companies pushing their own brands on physicians using the tool of data mining through the activities of what their industry calls detailers, salesmen who take the information and get in to see doctors and push their brands. In order to get to see doctors, detailers give gifts to doctors and staff, feed them with free lunches, and pass out free drug samples. Sounds a lot like bribery...you buy my product I give you this free stuff.

Unfortunately, doctors and the AMA often "encourage" physicians to refuse gifts and the like, but clearly that encouragement is not working. But for the physicians' willingness to be bribed, detailers would be out of work.

All that aside, the issue that the parties are asking the Supreme Court to determine is whether RESTRICTING this monkey business violates the data mining companies' free speech.

This one should be a slam dunk. Of course various marketing tactics can be restricted, we see it with cigarettes, we see it with alcohol. Free speech? It's not just speech we're talking about here, there's big money in data mining and physicians and their greed are part of the problem.

So you need a prescription, you get it and fill it and your doctor gets visited by pharmaceutical companies and gets freebies and lunches and even speaking engagements in an effort to encourage him to prescribe a certain pharmaceutical company's product.
Good or not?

Maybe we should cut out the middle man (the doctor) and have pharmaceutical companies go directly to patients if this is okay. At least then, people who can't afford their medication will get some for free and avoid having to visit their bought doctor and pay a co pay to get the refill prescription. Or...

Maybe pharmaceutical companies who engage in this activity should be mandated to have a free drug program where an equivalent amount of freebies are issued to patients using the drugs they're handing out to doctors...OR

Maybe the AMA should stop the facade of self-regulation and issue a rule that doctors cannot profit from disclosing their prescribing habits and then being sold on drugs by detailers....OR

Maybe physicians should have to disclose their participation in such programs to their patients.

Affordable Access to Quality Health services requires ending backroom deals between physicians and pharmaceutical companies. The distribution of free products to doctors costs all of us money because the freebies are just that, free. These freebies also bypass the records that physicians, health insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies are using to discriminate against individuals suffering from specific ailments because there is no effective tracking of the trafficking of these freebies from doctor offices.