Teaching future physicians to "just say no to drug reps"

Jan/26/2008 04:54 Filed in: HCP Marketing
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According to a Professor at Georgetown University a doctor who spends just one minute with a sales rep typically ends up prescribing 16% more of that rep's product than he or she was prescribing before. And a four-minute encounter is likely to prompt a 52% jump in prescriptions. An associate professor of physiology and biophysics at Georgetown University has spent the past six months lecturing med students at Georgetown and neighboring schools on how to resist sales reps' overtures, such as doling out free drug samples to physicians and bringing lunches for office staff. Another reason why the current business model may not work for pharma.



The irony of the program at Georgetown is that these programs are rolling out at medical and nursing schools across the country, funded by $21 million in grants from a consortium of state attorneys general. The money came out of a $430 million settlement Pfizer (PFE) reached with state and federal legislators in 2004 over allegations that its Warner-Lambert division—prior to being acquired by Pfizer—had improperly marketed the epilepsy drug Neurontin for uses not approved by the Food & Drug Administration, according to Business Week magazine.


Yes pharma has been reducing the number of sales people, in fact Wyeth has just announced planned layoffs, but the fact of the matter is that pharma is ill prepared for the changes taking place in health care professional marketing. They have invested minimum amount of dollars in online programs to reach docs and even when they do they don't know how to measure results.


The marketing and sales environment is changing on the HCP front as well. New physicians are embracing technology and the Web to both help reduce the costs within their practice and to keep up on the latest trends. Why? Well the Web is available 24/7 and physicians can network and take CME when THEY have the time rather then attending events in their area. In addition I am sure, given Vytoringate and the Avandia plunge, that physicians now have even a lower disregard for drug reps pitches then ever before.


Pharma had better start thinking about the future of both consumer and HCP marketing NOW. If they continue to use the same old "MBA school" thinking they are going to find themselves wasting marketing dollars at a time when management is going to start looking to cut marketing budgets.


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