Happy 2009! No More Pens!

Yesterday’s New York Times featured an article about PhRMA’s recent decision to impose a new voluntary ban on small branded items. Beginning today, PhRMA’s voluntary code of conduct will prohibit drug companies from giving items such as pens, pen lights, paperweights and more to doctors. According to the article, nearly 40 large drug companies have signed on to the new code of conduct while others just said they “intended to comply with the guidelines.”

The Times story links to a blog, “Drug Rep Toys,” that collects all the junk handed out by pharma, and one doctor’s impressive tower of thousand of pens he’s collected.

PhRMA executives still deny the the influence gift giving has on docs, saying in the article “we have never said and would never say that a pharmaceutical pen or notebook has influenced any prescription.” Yeah right. Research shows otherwise. Psychologically, gift-giving is tied to a feeling of indebtedness and expected reciprocity from the recipient. For drug companies, this reciprocity (subconscious or not) results in increased prescribing of their drugs. A systematic review of medical literature in the Journal of the AMA found that gifts resulted in reduced generic prescribing and increased overall prescription rates.

Our best guess about why PhRMA made this move at this time centers on the debate here in Massachusetts. With final regulations to be adopted by the Department of Public Health, Massachusetts has the opportunity to create a stronger ban of gifts and regulations on disclosure. The current draft of the regulations, however, does not fulfill the intentions of the legislature (see our synopsis here).

As we close out the books for 2008 and look forward to 2009, our wish for the final DPH regulations on this is that they don’t cut corners on what Chapter 305 intended.

The DPH will hear testimony at two public hearings on January 9 and 12. Here’s to hoping they plug the loopholes in the current draft regulations.
Jessica Hamilton