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Friday, July 05, 2002S.K. said her doctor maintains the office physicians signed a blank form letter provided by a Lilly salesman. S.K.'s medical records show no Prozac prescription, said fellow attorney Gary Farmer Jr. of Fort Lauderdale. I can take a pretty good guess at what happened. The drug rep told the doctor that if he just signed this letter, his patients on Prozac could be offered the more convenient, once weekly form of the drug. Then, the blank letters with the doctor’s signature were given to Walgreen's who searched their computer database for Prozac users to send the letters and the samples to. The woman’s old prescription probably came up, and she got the sample in the mail. It’s just an educated guess, but I’m willing to bet the ranch on it. This is wrong on so many levels. First, prescription drugs should never be sent through the mail unsolicited. Doing so can reveal sensitive and private information that the patient may not want disclosed, even to family members, as in this case. In addition, anyone could have gotten their hands on the sample. If a child had gotten those and ingested them, or if a family member taking a drug that could interact with them decided to try them out, the consequences could be tragic. Secondly, pharmacies shouldn’t share patient information with drug companies. This sadly is a fact of life in our country. Pharmacies sell lists of patients to the drug companies so they can target their junk mail advertisements to them. They also sell them information on physician perscribing habits. I’ve had drug reps tell me they know I write prescriptions for a specific disease, but not for their particular product, and once while breakfasting in a restaurant I overheard a conversation between two drug reps in which they were mapping out their sales strategy. It was clear that they knew just how many prescriptions for their drugs were written by each physician in their territory. Lastly, sending unsolicited prescription drugs through the mail makes the drugs seem more trivial than they are. Even when switching from one form of the same drug to another, the physician should discuss it with the patient first. In this case, form letters and samples were meant to replace regular Prozac with once-a-week Prozac. Although they are the same drug, the rules for taking the two are quite different, and the physician has an obligation to make sure the patient understands that. What if a patient recieves the once-a-week Prozac in the mail but doesn’t take the time to read the form letter? He could end up taking them once a day instead of once a week and suffer serious side effects from them. We have to remember that prescription drugs are available only by prescription for a reason. They can be dangerous as well as beneficial, and for that reason we must be ever vigilant for their misuse. posted by Sydney on 7/05/2002 08:24:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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