The war of free samples and attentions to the doctors exposes U.S. laboratories.UU. to a rain of criticism and investigations. No more free dinners at fashionable restaurants or Broadway Tickets. No more lunches followed by games of golf. No more skiing excursions or Silverplate in stadiums.
To silence their critics and avoid greater regulation, the pharmaceutical industry has decided to change tactics to promote their products among doctors. On 10 July entered into force new voluntary guidelines established by laboratories leaders, which put limits on the gifts which the visitors of the companhias distributed among doctors to influence their prescription of remedies. From now, all interactions with the CRM industry software medical should benefit patients and enhance the practice of medicine, according to the new standard. Give a replica in plastic of an ear or a lung that doctors can use to lecture the patient is considered to be adequate, but not what will give a sporty bag or medications-branded golf balls. To which comes this impulse to moralize promotion tactics? The backdrop is a growing irritation at the high cost of drugs. The sector is object of legislative investigations and a series of demands from causes ranging from patents to the ads aimed at consumers.
Until recently, the laboratories seemed impervious to the bad publicity that attracted them, in the last five years, its war of gifts. Since 1997 the expense of drug companies in marketing events and meetings duplico far, reaching 2.1 billion of dollars in 2001. But now senior managers in large firms decided to put things in order, says Tim Margraf of ImpactRX, a firm that he analyzes the pharmaceutical industry promotional spending. Spine but now need to suppress their entertainments, the powerful army of 81,000 sales will remain the backbone of the pharmaceutical marketing representatives. Doctors do not instruct if same on new drugs, said Mick Kolassa, Professor of marketing at the University of Mississippi pharmacist.