TUESDAY, April 24 (HealthDay News) -- Pharmaceutical company representatives use various tactics to gain "friendships" with physicians, each depending on the personality of the doctor, in order to sway prescription sales, according to a Policy Forum report in the April issue of PLoS Medicine.
Adriane Fugh-Berman, M.D., of Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, D.C., and Shahram Ahari, M.P.H., a former drug representative for Eli Lilly who is now at the University of California San Francisco, report that company salespeople are trained to assess physicians' personalities and personal lives, which includes taking note of objects around their office. They use this information to establish false friendships in order to manipulate prescribing habits.
For example, strategies used for friendly physicians include relying on the friendship to ask for a favor in the form of prescriptions, while those for physicians who refuse to meet with company representatives rely on interactions with office staff. Prescribing habits for each physician can be purchased from pharmacies, a tactic even many doctors are unaware of, and used to target specific physicians for increased or decreased marketing efforts.
"In the interests of patients, physicians must reject the false friendship provided by reps," the authors write. "Physicians must rely on information on drugs from unconflicted sources, and seek friends among those who are not paid to be friends."
Ahari was a paid expert witness for the defense in litigation against a New Hampshire law prohibiting the sale of prescription data. Fugh-Berman was a paid expert witness for the plaintiff in litigation against Pfizer for unlawful marketing of gabapentin and is author of a number of books on alternative medicine.
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