Is Doctors Prescribing Habits Used to Improve Safety or Sales?

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Pharmaceutical companies have inside data of virtually every doctor in the United States. This data records every prescription signed by every doctor, letting big pharma know which doctors are prescribing the latest and most expensive drugs on the market. To put it in door to door salesman lingo, it’s a list of every sucker in the neighborhood.

Where do pharma companies acquire this information? From the American Medical Association. Dr. John Santa, an internist at the Portland Veterans Affairs Medical Center and consultant to the Prescription Project and is also a part of a coalition trying to curb drug companies' access to doctor prescribing information said, “Doctors are not aware that companies are out there that know every prescription a doctor prescribes. Consumers should care because here's this very effective information and data system that is not being used to improve quality or safety of their care but to increase the sales of specific drugs, many of which are no more effective than much-cheaper alternatives.”

The recent controversy has also caused new bills in more than a dozen states trying to protect their citizens from the rising cost of healthcare brought upon by big pharma. AMA believes that they have helped through “evidence-based medical research, structuring clinical trials, efficient drug recalls, aiding the Food and Drug Administration's ongoing post-approval assessment of drug benefits versus risks, and many other uses."

But there is still no explanation as to why they need to provide doctors providing habits to big pharma. Several of the new bills being passed have allowed doctors to decide whether the information gathered from their prescribing habits can be used to make or promote drugs.

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