Just as more physicians restrict and even eliminate face time with sales reps, a new study suggests the practice has a quantifiable downside. After the FDA approved the first-in-class Januvia diabetes pill, for instance, docs who had little interaction with reps took longer to write prescriptions than docs whose access to reps was not as restricted. Meanwhile, physicians who rarely, if ever, saw reps were slowest to change their prescribing habits after negative news emerged about the Avandia diabetes pill and the Vytorin cholesterol drug. Specifically, the study found that docs with very low access to reps had the lowest adoption rates for Januvia, which is sold by Merck, and took 1.4 and 4.6 times longer to start writing prescriptions than docs who had low or medium access to reps after the pill was launched six years ago. Docs who had very low access to reps were 4 times slower to reduce use of Avandia, after a Black Box warning was issued in 2007 for the GlaxoSmithKline drug, than those with low access. There was also “significantly less” change in prescribing habits in response to controversial and disappointing trial results released in 2008 for Vytorin, another Merck pill.
