DC Metro Area Medical Malpractice Law Blog

The New York Times reports that in February there will be a new push announced by Community Catalyst, a health care consumer advocacy group based in Boston, and the Institute on Medicine as a Profession, a research group at Columbia University, to reduce samples and gifts the drug companies give to physicians.

With a $6 million grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts, there is a national campaign planned which calls for restrictions on the interactions between doctors and drug companies, and urges doctors to base their prescription writing on medical evidence not marketing.

“If you’ve been in the waiting room when these Chinese lunches are taken into the back office, it may raise the question whether the decisions are based on the best scientific evidence about medication or whether or not those Sichuan shrimp have something to do with the prescribing patterns,” said Jim O’Hara, the managing director of policy initiatives at Pew.

It is estimated, in the article, that the U.S. pharmaceutical industry spends $12 billion a year marketing to doctors.  According to the article, a significant amount of that money is in the form of free samples delivered to doctors’ offices, often accompanied by office lunches.  When the University of Michigan health systems banned such lunches in 2005, they calculated that the lunches had been worth $2.5 million a year.

The free drugs are samples are often of the newest and most expensive branded products. It is believed that the drug industry hopes that by starting patients with free samples, they will remain on the more expensive medication rather than using a cheaper generic version.