“Harvard Academic To Organize Insurance Industry CER Detailing Program” gushes the headline of the article on academic detailing:
“A prominent academic at the forefront of comparative effectiveness research pharmaceutical detailing efforts will soon begin seeking support for the establishment of a third-party payer non-profit organization to help physicians receive information on medical therapies from a wider group of experts -- including insurance companies -- as opposed to predominantly from drug manufacturers.”
The “prominent academic?” Why it’s non other than Harvard Medical School researcher Jerry Avorn – the same high-minded and unbiased man of science who said, “Marketing departments of many drug companies don’t respect any boundaries of professionalism or the law.”
Untrue and unfair. That’s a pretty broad brush – but Dr. Avorn has never worried about the unintended consequences of hyperbole.
(Avorn already established two non-profit groups supported by government funding that help disseminate CER information to doctors. The National Resource Center for Academic Detailing obtains funding from HHS' Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to help train academic detailers, while the Independent Drug Information Service compiles CER information and is supported by some state government agencies, including the Pennsylvania Department of Aging.)
"I'll be, basically, phoning contacts that I know in the private sector and asking if they would like to engage in this bold adventure together," he told FDA Week.
Well, “bold” may be one word for it. Another, less flattering adjectival phrase, “intellectually dishonest” – may be more applicable.
(This is the same Jerry Avorn who tried to claim that there was a higher incidence of black box warnings around drugs approved right before user fee deadlines but got caught when Bob Temple and FDA economists found significant, uh, omissions in his database and "rounding" errors that, when accounted, for essentially eliminated any difference in the number of black box warnings.)
There is little information on why so few AD programs attempt to measure overall healthcare cost reductions. This is likely due to the fact that measuring changes in prescription drug costs is a more manageable analysis than determining changes in overall healthcare spending. It also (in the calling a spade a spade department) fits into the general cognitive mapping of those who believe that pharmaceutical costs are the main driver of health care costs. (FYI – on-patent drug costs represent less than a dime on the American healthcare dollar.)
I’ve said it before, but it’s worth repeating -- the worst part about rushing headlong into academic detailing is that there is no clear articulation or transparency regarding the specific rules and regulations that will govern the behavior and activities of AHRQ-funded detailers.
Some of those unanswered (and, alas, unasked) questions:
Q: What safe guards are in place to certify that physicians are being presented information that is unbiased? Previous government detailing efforts have often focused on demonstrating their own value by highlighting the cost effectiveness of initiatives through savings generated from the increased utilization of generics and other low cost therapies.
Asked another way – how can an “academic detailing” program funded by our nation’s largest payer be considered neutral? Just like detailing programs run by pharmaceutical companies, there is an inherent “interest.” And that’s okay – as long as that “interest” is transparent. But “academic” it ain’t.
Q: What information is worthy of being detailed by these programs? Who decides and on what basis?
Q: What can they say or not say? Who decides? Will they have to play by the same rules as pharmaceutical representatives? And, importantly, what is the oversight mechanism? If academic detailers stray into off-label conversations, to whom does DDMAC send a letter? Whom does the Department of Justice investigate? Who pays the fine?
All this to say that, if academic detailing is the answer – what’s the question?
As the old Crazy Eddie commercial asked, “What’s the story, Jerry?”
