Physicians saying no more often to drug reps

The Wall Street Journal: A report out Thursday on the accessibility of doctors to pharmaceutical reps showed that fewer physicians are letting reps visit them. "The number of physicians who were 'rep-accessible,' defined as meeting with at least 70% of salespeople who come calling, dropped by 18% from last year, according to sales and marketing consultants ZS Associates." The report noted that now 58 percent of prescribing doctors are considered rep-friendly, and those who see 30 percent or less of reps who come calling are up to 9 percent of all prescribing doctors (Hobson, 5/6).

Pharma Times: "The study looked at the sales rep-related interactions of more than 500,000 physicians, nurse practitioners and other pharmaceutical prescribers in the USA and both the planned and completed calls of more than 41,000 reps — about half of all those operating in the country" (Grogan, 5/7).

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This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.