Have you ever become frustrated or annoyed at prescription drug advertisements on television? Many people love to hate these commercials, but of course they must be effective at increasing prescriptions. Otherwise, would the pharmaceutical companies spend the big bucks required to put such commercials on the air?
We recently heard from a drug industry insider who feels that ads would not be needed if doctors did a better job educating patients about their medications:
Q. You’ve written about misleading television ads for prescription drugs. I have been in the pharmaceutical industry for 18 years and I can tell you the biggest reason for direct-to-consumer ads is because the pharmaceutical industry is being shut out of seeing the prescribers to detail products.
I hear time and again that health care professionals don’t tell their patients how to start a new drug properly. If the provider would just listen to the drug representative about the proper way to start, a lot more patients would have a positive experience.
I know some reps may exaggerate the benefits of a drug but most are ethical and do not. If there were more of a partnership between physicians and drug companies, there would much better outcomes for patients.
Understanding Benefits and Risks
A. We agree that it is crucial that prescribers understand the benefits and risks of the drugs they prescribe. They also need to know how to advise patients about starting or stopping their medications.
We disagree, however, that pharmaceutical sales reps are the best way for health care professionals to get this information. You wouldn’t rely on the car salesperson to tell you how to fix your car; for that, you consult the mechanic.
We’d be much more confident in doctors learning about drug benefits and risks using impartial sources rather than drug industry sales reps. (One source doctors can use to get quick summaries of evidence-based medicine is www.thennt.com.)
In our opinion, television commercials don’t qualify as objective sources of benefit-risk data either. If the FDA okays a proposal to limit the amount of side effect information in drug advertisements, they will be even less balanced in the future.
In fact, it is not clear that drug commercials serve an important role in educating prescribers. Elsewhere in the world, prescribers seem to get by without them. The US is almost unique among industrialized countries in permitting this type of direct-to-consumer advertising. New Zealand is the only other country that does.
What do you think? Let us know below.
