Newsroom RX

• Massachusetts restricts pharma marketing in cost, quality bill 08/01/2008

  Last night, as part of a larger Health Care Cost and Quality bill, Massachusetts passed a law restricting pharmaceutical and medical device industry marketing. If signed by the governor, the bill would:

  -create an academic detailing program to provide unbiased information to prescribers;

  -require companies to disclose payments to health care providers valued at $50 or more;

  -direct the DPH to establish regulations on pharmaceutical and medical device marketing, using the PhRMA code as a minimum standard; that voluntary code bans small gifts and limits meals and travel that can be offered to prescribers.  The Massachusetts the law also lets DPH go further than the industry code;

  -establish a $5000 penalty per violation for companies, granting enforcement power to the Attorney General.

  “The provisions passed today are a positive step forward,” said Lisa Kaplan Howe, private market policy manager at Health Care For All, a member of the Massachusetts Prescription Reform Coalition.  “They show a commitment on behalf of the legislature, and particularly Senate President Murray, to curb the influence of inappropriate marketing.  The Massachusetts Prescription Reform Coalition looks forward to working with State leaders to make sure the Commonwealth has the strongest and safest possible protections for consumers.”

  For more, read the Boston Globe.

• Congress introduces academic detailing bill, highlights need for unbiased drug info 07/31/2008

  A bill introduced in both houses of Congress Thursday would create a federal academic detailing program to offer doctors unbiased information about prescription drugs.

  The bill, sponsored by Sen. Herb Kohl (D-WI), Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL), Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) and Sen. Robert Casey (D-PA). Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ) in the House, would establish programs through which medical schools and other non-profit organizations can send a trained staff of pharmacists, nurses, and other health care professionals into doctors’ offices with independent data about the relative risks, benefits and costs of prescription drugs.

  “This bill will provide an important alternative to the way doctors currently get their information about drugs—from the drug companies themselves.  This practice seems to be fraught with conflicts of interest,” said Sen. Kohl in a statement.

  “We need a program like this to counter the pharmaceutical industry’s marketing free-for-all,” said Robert Restuccia, executive director of the Prescription Project. “Academic detailing programs already exist in other countries and in several states, and they’ve been shown to improve care and generate savings.”

  For more, visit PostScript.

• Report from tri-state initiative provides roadmap for prescriber education programs 07/30/2008

  A tri-state initiative led by Prescription Policy Choices has issued a report on creating prescriber education and outreach programs, or "academic detailing."  Forged in collaboration between Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, the Academic Detailing Planning Initiative report offers creative and cost-effective guidance for those looking to build prescriber education programs with limited resources. 

  Released Friday at the National Conference of State Legislatures Annual Meeting, the report is available at www.policychoices.org.

• Head of Kaiser's physician group calls PhRMA code 'window dressing' 07/16/2008

  This week, the head of a Kaiser Permanente’s physician network, the largest of its kind in the U.S., spoke out against the revised PhRMA code in the pages of the San Francisco Chronicle, calling it “nothing more than window dressing,” and “a weak, transparent move by an industry that is pretending to take strong action.”

  Dr. Pearl, CEO and executive director of The Permanente Medical Group, a 6000-physician network that serves 3.3 million patients in northern California and abides its own pharmfree code, said that instead of relying on the profit-making industry to police itself, physicians must collectively take responsibility for limiting the influence of the drugmaker industry on the medicine they practice, writing that “we cannot abdicate our responsibility as professionals - whose duty is to put patients' interest first - by relying on the industry that benefits from those inducements to self-regulate.”

  Read the full column here.

• Sen. Grassley looks into psychiatry association's funding 07/14/2008

  As part of his continuing inquiry into medical conflicts of interest and financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) has asked the American Psychiatric Association to submit to him its financial statements, citing concern that the degree of support the specialty society receives from commercial interests is causing field-wide bias.

  Here’s coverage in the New York Times, and an opinion piece in the Boston Globe by former New England Journal of Medicine editor Dr. Arnold S. Relman discussing the proper source of incentives in academic research.

  And in the San Francisco Chronicle, Dr. Lawrence Diller, a UCSF-affiliated pediatrician writes:

  "The Fortune 500 drug companies, by their sheer economic clout, have become the single most dominant influence in our health care system. The ambiguities of children's mental health and illness make child psychiatry the most vulnerable branch of medicine open to such influence."