Right on the money. I have been working with providers in multiple disease states for over 20 years. Education for most all of them stops when the graduate residency or fellowship. Without industry sales people, dinner programs, medical staff, etc. they would not be able to stay even remotely updated. Most will admit that, especially if their institution does not allow sales people access. Those physicians often flat out complain about it.
I spent my last personal specialist appointment educating one such young specialist about the last 2 drugs approved in his specialty. He literally told me “I don’t have time to educate myself and I have young kids so I can’t go to conferences. I hate that my institution blocks pharma out because I rely on people like you to keep me informed.” They are not my companies drugs.
The mothership of that institution won’t let our sales force in, bad mouths our marketing efforts, but has no problem strong arming me for a $50k grant to support their research foundation which by the way is trying to develop competition for my current company as well as our competitors. Perhaps, we can buy back our investment for a few hundred million when the time comes. How about them ethics?
Happens all the time at “restricted institutions.”
You are in neurology so perhaps you know this…if you want to be treated with the latest and greatest neurological therapy from 20 years ago, go to Mayo clinic for treatment. They hate industry, but never mind that they are one of the biggest diagnostics companies in the industry and never mind that they exploit loop holes in the diagnostic approval options to get those diagnostics to market or that they reap hundreds of millions in profit doing so. That is ok because they are not industry profiteers.
