A hearing will be held tomorrow morning at a federal appeals court in Boston regarding a challenge to what pharma says is a First Amendment right to track prescription records. Last year, a federal court in New Hampshire
struck down a first-in-the-nation law prohibiting prescription data identifying patients or prescribers from being accessed for marketing purposes. State officials argued the law protected doctor-patient relationships and the health and safety of patients, while also helping containing health care costs.For those who haven’t followed this, drugmakers want this data so they can learn which docs are high prescribers and figure out who to target for the hard sell. Two research firms, also known as data miners, IMS Health and Verispan, challenged the law and called it unconstitutional. They received backing not only from industry, but also free-speech advocates. Consumer and patient groups lined up behind the state, citing patient privacy and a need to lower health costs.
US District Judge Paul Barbadoro in his ruling wrote that the New Hampshire law “attempts to address important public policy concerns,†but when states “adopt speech restrictions as their method, courts must subject their efforts to closer scrutiny.†The law “cannot be enforced to the extent that it purports to restrict the transfer or use of prescriber-identifiable data.â€
The legislation was sponsored by state rep Cindy Rosenwald, a member of the National Legislative Association on Drug Prices which, along with a few other organizations, are supporting New Hampshire's appeal. These include AARP, Community Catalyst, National Physicians Alliance and Prescription Policy Choices.
4 Comments
Pharma industry public relations insist that such data provided to its sales reps. is entirely for the benefit of the patients of any given doctor, in order to guide them to recommended medicinal treatment. Obvious bias and deception.
While I accept allbeit reluctantly the commercial free speech argument, this doesn't mean the practice can't be regulated through the tax/Medicaid supplemental rebate program. The simple solution is to impose financial disincentives on physicians who do not opt out of disclosure of their prescribing data or to tax the sale of data to pharma companies to the extent it makes data acquisition painful--add supplemental rebates on companies' products, for example, or impose a tax directly on the companies which sell data within a state.
To argue this practice benefits patient care is ridiculous and self-serving.
Pharma companies do have the ability to track prescriptions/use of injectables (since they frequently have commercial ops folks to help get the use approved by insurance companies)and, as we all know, the only docs who are treated like VIPs who aren't high prescribers are the docs they are trying to woo to use & promote the product. I can get behind making prescription rates by physician available if there is a centralized place where the general public can have access to that data presented side by side with the information regarding all grants and other rewards provided to that provider (this data should also be cross-referenced by practice/institution).
As a Physician I am entitled to privacy of my prescribing habits( that are dictated by the latest professional guidelines), without having the press behind my shoulders. But I'm not concerned at all about the phrmaceutical industry: they always inflate the positive and minimize the negative. Many Doctors I know completly avoid talking to the reps. The general public has no right to know what Dr. G. prescribes, just like has no right to know which medication the court Judges are taking.