Ten Ways Pharmaceutical Companies Market to Your Doctor

Even when it was illegal for pharmaceutical companies to advertise treatments for erectile dysfunction to the public, they had enormous amounts of cash invested in marketing programs. Your medical providers -- doctors, nurse practitioners, and others -- are literally bombarded by drug advertisements.

Methods Pharmaceutical Companies Use

1. Classes on off-label uses of a drug - While a drug approved by the FDA to treat depression may be very effective, that may not be where its real value lies. A little-known fact is that off-label use, or using a drug for a non-FDA-approved treatment, is completely legal and very common. These off-label uses aren't publicised; it's illegal. But in a necessary loophole, they can be taught in classes. Your physician may be attending drug classes where he is learning that sildenafil (Viagra) may be used for, say, treating certain types of hypertension.

Off-label uses are good because they allow circumvention of the FDA to provide seriously-ill people treatments that have been shown save. Still, they don't always work the way preliminary pharmaceutical research indicates. They are great news for the pharmaceutical industry, though, because it allows a single drug to double, triple, or further increase the people who will use it.

2. Little "premiums" - look at the notepads, magnets, pens, clipboards, even posters in your doctor's office. Most will have the imprint of a pharmaceutical company on them. Sales staff leave these in doctors' offices to keep their names and brands fresh in the physician's mind.

3. Free samples - When prescribing a new drug, your doctor usually has blister packs of pills ready to hand to you. He doesn't get those by ordering them or buying them at the pharmacy; instead, pharmaceutical salespeople leave these at his office.

Doctors are reluctant to switch prescriptions when they have been started. This means if you start taking Levitra using sample packs and it works, the doctor will continue prescribing it to you. And they are much more likely to prescribe medications that they have available free samples for.

This isn't all bad by any means. Those free samples can save the life of someone who can't afford a necessary prescription; and if a doctor asks a salesman to do it, he'll leave large supplies of any given sample with the doctor. But you should be aware that once you take that sample, you may be locking into using that medication.

4. Free magazine subscriptions to their publications promoting their own products - All the large pharmaceutical companies have their own online and/or print publications with chatty articles about asthma and diabetes, new discoveries that their cutting-edge scientists have made, and even details on new off-label uses for drugs they've developed.

I'm not going to lie -- I love these magazines. They are well-written and have absolute cutting-edge information. However, they do showcase the drugs developed by the pharmaceutical company that produces them, and ignore any better drugs by other pharmaceutical companies.

(Note: If your doctor has magazines like this in his office, you should be able to get him to get you samples or even a free subscription of your own by just asking.)

5. Traditional marketing to consumers, which gets you to ask your doctor about new drugs - All those stupid erectile-dysfunction, bladder control, and depression commercials do have a purpose. Yes, you can't just walk into the store and get them. But they make it much more likely that you will ask your doctor for these products by name.

Studies by pharmaceutical marketers have shown that if a patient asks for a drug by name that may prove efficacious for his or her disease, a doctor usually will prescribe it.

6. Direct-mail marketing - This is less useful than many marketing techniques, but pharmaceutical companies still will direct-mail doctors with samples, informational sheets, premiums, and other freebies to get them to pay attention to their products. Often, this is done by a new salesperson who is trying to build a niche up.

7. Visits by salespeople who educate on on- and off-label drug uses, often at a dinner out or other free treat - Some 93% of doctors, according to a JAMA study, admit to accepting dinners out and small entertainment gifts from a pharmaceutical salesperson. This is typically just a way to get the doctor to listen to a sales pitch or educational information, as well as developing a friendly relationship with a new medical provider.

8. Payments for consulting or giving lectures - This used to be fairly egregious, with doctors getting a substantial amount of their incomes from these sorts of kickbacks -- for they were kickbacks. Today, new pharmaceutical organizations like PhRMA have instituted guidelines that their members voluntarily follow, preventing these abuses from happening.

Most payments for these things now are for time, and provide about the same or less income to the doctor that he or she would gain from regular medical practice.

However, there is still a real danger. Most pharmaceutical companies hire their very well-paid scientists and researchers from three different sectors: research institutions, the FDA (a whole nother conflict of interest story), or private practice. This means doctors who build up a reputation for consulting and lecturing can increase the chances a pharmaceutical company will hire them.

How much is that worth? When I worked at Pfizer in southeastern Connecticut, there was one researcher who flew his private plane to work from his farm in southern New Hampshire, at least three days a week. You have to make pretty good money to do that.

9. Enrolling their patients in clinical trials - this is one of the most altruistic marketing methods. Especially with cancer drugs, pharmaceutical companies are hungry for clinical trial subjects; doctors are hungry for new treatments for their terminal patients that might buy time or even save their lives. It very much works to the advantage of both for doctors to remain very aware of what the pharmaceutical companies are doing in this area.

10. Direct marketing of all these types to medical school and nursing professors -- the people who train your medical providers - All nine of the above methods, when used to market to medical school professors, are very effective in training new doctors to use the drugs marketed. You trust your teachers to get it right. If the pharmaceutical salesperson can convince them of the efficacy of a drug, they have not just gained a single not-that-lucrative customer, but rather dozens of customers in his or her students, who will go on to private and public practice everywhere.

Does All This Marketing Work?

Remember, doctors are human. Many claim that these little - and big perks do not influence them or their practice, that though they may get some very nice gifts these things don't encourage them to prescribe more medications.

If that were true, why would the industry continue investing money in the practices? Pharmaceutical companies spend billions on these different marketing techniques because they have documented evidence that they do work.

This doesn't mean you have to stop trusting your doctor, or believing him. Some of the marketing pharmaceutical companies do is necessary -- for example, off-label treatments are generally under study and can't be publicly released, but can indeed be efficacious for you.

Your best bet is simply to know the drugs you're taking -- whether you are using a brand name when a generic would be just as good, for instance, or if there have been recent side-effects linked to it, or whether it is indeed efficacious for treating your off-label symptoms. Your doctor, right or wrong, almost certainly trusts his pharmaceutical sales representative to tell him the truth. Sometimes they don't. Don't blame your doctor.