Legislation would require Pharma to disclose gifts and payments to doctors

Critics have said the payments may skew doctors' decision-making.

HAH! MAY????????????????

Freebies are cool. My doc operates in a low income neighborhood and so stocks up on all the freebies he can in order to better serve his patients w/o insurance...

But he is probably just part of a sizable minority of all the doc's out there.

Full disclosure and published somewhere is definitely important.

Kickbacks for monthly volumes of prescribed drugs are a big part of the problem.

He would tell us all the ways he bribed doctors, and it was pretty disgraceful. It was eyeopening to get it from a drug rep's perspective. Even he didn't like it, but it's the way the business is done.

It's very insane, what they do to get docs to proscribe their employers' meds.

I hated Wednesdays and Fridays at the clinic because they were drug rep days. Days they spent roaming the office halls quite freely and pestering us office staff because the doc was (rightly) in the clinic seeing patients. And I mean I had about 4 or 5 a day, each wanting to hang out on the office for an hour if they could get by with it. You do the math on how much of MY time that would have wasted if I had allowed it.

Oh, and there was the catered lunch, usually from the new trendy hot spot in town, on Wednesdays, with a "presentation" from a sales rep who had absolutely no scientific knowledge whatsoever, but who looked good and *sounded* good.

That was the sane stuff. Then there were the off site parties, and junkets to resorts for weekend, ostensibly for "education" and yes, the MDs sometimes could get CME credit.

:puke:

But you couldn't tell them to take a hike, exactly...

1) They had access to the clinical trials dept and could tell you about upcoming $$$ in the form of research grants that you might be interested in.

2) They gave away free samples that you could keep a stash of for your most needy patients. Compazine and oxycontin especially prized. Despite it's unfortunate tumble into street use, Oxy is a good pain mgt tool for cancer patients.

In short, there's got to be a better way of informing docs about drugs than the sleazy system that has sprung up.

but we could send patients home with a sample or two, to say get them through the weekend until they could get to the pharmacy to fill their script. The reps had to write out and account for all the stuff they gave away too, to make sure they weren't giving away too much product. I forget how much we were allowed a month, it's been 10 years and the rules have probably changed.

printed on the side was the name of some drug, remembering it was something that would be abused by shooting it up. It was too funny. Rep handed me a bunch of these, I looked at them and started laughing "wtf?". Rep told me she had to get rid of this stuff, had an amount they HAD to give away every week and her trash can was full. If I'd take a bunch it would help her out and she'd be fine with me just tossing the crap. She was about ready to quit, couldn't take the bs anymore.