Doctors Reject Prescriber Profiling

"We don't like the practice, and we want it to stop..." Jean Silver-Isenstadt

The quote is by the Executive Director of the National Physicians Alliance, NPA, a group whose members are mostly young doctors in training. Ms. Silver-Isenstadt was commenting on a Kennebec Journal article asserting that pharmaceutical company data-mining of a doctors prescriptive history serves mainly to influence physicians to prescribe more expensive medicines, instead of to provide the best treatment. She also said: "We think it's a contaminant to the doctor-patient relationship, and it's driving up costs."

We would like to support the physicians at NPA for taking this step to stand up to the powerful pharmaceutical lobby. Pharmaceutical marketing to physicians is a significant issue of national concern. The May 15th edition of the Annals of Internal Medicine includes an in-depth editorial titled "Prescriber Profiling: Time to Call It Quits". The author, a doctor, concludes that if physicians want prescriber profiling to end, they must lobby state legislatures to enact laws, lobby their professional organization to support such laws, and call on the AMA to place further limits on selling physician data for use in prescriber profiling. Physicians should also refuse to participate in marketing research that generates prescribing patterns because the primary purpose of this practice is to enhance sales, not patient welfare.

If NPA is serious about its mission, the time has come for physicians to roll back the influence of commercial marketing practices on clinical decisions. John and Jane Public can now rest assured that the doctors of the future are aware of the conflicts arising from drug company solicitations and that those doctors are willing to place the interest of the patient first, before profits.