Opting out of the AMA database
I found this post by California Medicine Man to be fascinating. It is regarding how the American Medical Association makes physicians' prescribing information available to pharaceutical representatives, and how physicians can opt-out of this, er... sort of.
posted by Kannan at 9/03/2006 12:11:00 PM
3 Comments:
I was aware of this. And, I was seriously considering opting out. Down near the bottom of the written document that I received from AMA, it said that pharma reps also have the option to stop giving samples to docs who opt out.
I'm in a community where my patients sometimes depend on samples. I don't agree that this information should be kept, but for my patients, I stayed in.
Now that's an interesting thing that I hadn't considered. A lot of patients do depend on those samples. I wonder if a rep would actually punish a doctor who doesn't share prescribing information by not giving out samples. That may engender ill will and give that rep a bad rap.
As far as a drug rep goes, their job (like ours somewhat) is driven by data. If a rep cannot show their superiors that I am prescribing more of their drug (because I opted out), then what is their motivation to keep detailing me?
So, I don't view it as a rep punishing a doc, but I view it as the pharma company directing their reps to stop detailing me. Who loses out, not me, and not the rep, but the patient. An unfortunate reality.
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