Some Doctors Persist In Prescribing Dangerous Drugs

After years of reducing their contact with pharmaceutical sales representatives, physicians now risk an unintended consequence: Doctors who rarely meet with pharmaceutical sales representatives or who do not meet with them at all are much slower to stop prescribing dangerous medicines that have been tagged with black box warnings by the Food and Drug Administration.

According to a study published in the Journal of Clinical Hypertension, doctors whose access to pharmaceutical sales representatives is limited can take more than four times longer to change prescriptions based on new information than their peers who have more frequent contact. This longer response time holds true whether the physicians are responding to positive news related to an innovative therapy or negative news related to a newly discovered medicine risk.

“This study analyzed for the first time, and on a large scale, what happens to physicians’ prescription decisions when you decrease the access that pharmaceutical sales reps have to doctors,” says researcher George Chressanthis, acting director for the Center for Healthcare Research and Management at Temple University’s Fox School of Business. “We saw that increasing access restrictions affect physician decision-making in ways not anticipated by those at health care systems or large group practices who created these policies.”

“Though health care professionals work hard to minimize distractions and maximize the time they spend with patients, it’s clear that sales rep access restrictions imposed by well-meaning physicians and group practice leaders can result in serious information gaps,” says Pratap Khedkar of ZS Associates, a consulting firm that took part in the research. “Even though pharmaceutical sales representatives are not the only source of information, they do help physicians stay current on therapy developments. These findings should be carefully considered by those who set policy, whether it’s at the physician group practice level or on the national stage.”