Restrictions on pharma reps change docs’ prescribing behavior

The team noted that detailing restrictions differed among the centers.

Eleven of the centers regulated gifts to physicians, restricted sales representatives’ access to facilities, and had explicit enforcement policies. For 8 of these 11 centers, there was a significant change in prescribing practices.

The remaining 8 centers had less stringent restrictions in that they did not cover all 3 areas of restriction (regulating gifts, restricting access, and having enforcement policies). There was a significant change in prescribing practices for only 1 of these centers.

“No medical center completely barred salesperson visits,” Dr Larkin noted. “Salespeople could and did continue to visit physicians at all medical centers in the study. The most common restriction put in place was a ban on meals and other small gifts.”

“The fact that regulating gifts while still allowing sales calls still led to a switch to cheaper, generic drugs may suggest that gifts such as meals play an important role in influencing physicians. The correlation between meals and prescribing has been well established in the literature, but our study suggests this relationship may be causal in nature.”