How Drug Reps Know Which Doctors to Target - Big (Brother) Pharma
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
By: Jake Whitney

The New Republic - 8/29/06 - For years Dr. Peter Klementowicz suspected that pharmaceutical sales representatives knew more about the prescriptions he was writing than they let on. Klementowicz, a cardiologist in Nashua, New Hampshire, would occasionally hear curious statements from drug reps, such as, "you're one of my targets." His suspicion peaked when a friend told him she overheard a group of reps at a local Panera Bread discussing ways to induce Klementowicz to prescribe their drugs.

How did they know he wasn't already prescribing their drugs? It wasn't until last year, after Klementowicz's wife stumbled upon a two-year-old newspaper article, that he learned what more and more doctors are also just discovering: Drug companies know almost everything about which physicians prescribe which drugs and how often.

Klementowicz's case is unusual: His wife, Cindy Rosenwald, is a New Hampshire state representative. The revelation that drug reps knew about his prescribing habits prompted her bill--signed into law by Governor John Lynch this summer--that bans the sale for commercial use of prescription data throughout the state. Rosenwald's bill was the first of its kind to become law, but several other states are considering regulating what they increasingly see as an onerous practice. And it's not hard to see why.

For more than a decade, drug companies have been tracking physicians' prescription records. It helps their bottom line immensely by allowing their sales reps to hound and ply physicians who, they believe, are underprescribing their drugs. But the practice is only just starting to receive widespread attention. In fact, a 2004 survey sponsored by the American Medical Association (AMA) found that about 25 percent of doctors were still unaware of the practice. And they're not all happy about it, either. Some doctors see it as disruptive of their professional prerogatives. Others resent the violation of their privacy. But the real effects may be far worse than the physician outcry suggests. The real problem is financial: skyrocketing drug prices. Buying and selling prescription records is a lucrative business, and, perhaps as no other factor, it inflates the cost of drugs.

{This story details just one kind of aggregation, collection, and data mining of medical records----the aggregation, data mining and sale of prescription records to big Pharma. Other corporations aggregate, data mine, and sell even more complete and detailed medical records to employers and others. BCBS formed a business unit to aggregate and sell the claims, medical, lab, and prescription records of all 79 million enrollees to large employers. See our Press Release dated 8/11/06. ~ Dr. Deborah Peel, Patient Privacy Rights}

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