Some docs do get perks to recommend our drugs: Reps

HYDERABAD: At every hospital, one can see scores of medical representatives (MR) waiting eagerly to get an appointment with doctor to pitch their product. As part of promoting their products, the representatives give physician samples (of medicines) to doctors. For far too long, people held the view that doctors are given high valued 'gifts' including joy rides to foreign countries, as incentive to prescribing drugs. But is the practise widely prominent?

Express spoke to experienced medical representatives (MR) fand senior doctors to find this out.

The MRs said that since there are thousands of pharmaceutical firms, and competition is intense, they offer all form of incentives ranging from cash to foreign tours, in return of promoting sales.

However, they also added that this is mostly limited to doctors who have only MBBS, or those who completed bachelors in Ayurveda, Homeopathy.

The MRs and senior doctors from the city said that since super specialty doctors earn salary ranging in lakhs,majority of them do not get lured with incentives given by medical representatives representing pharmaceutical firms.

"Even if a super specialty doctor accepts the foreign trips, pharmaceutical firms sponsor their registration fee of Continous Medical Education programme, which runs anywhere between Rs 20000 to Rs 60000. Only a few doctors do it and it is not justified to draw generalisation that all doctors accept incentives," said a senior Psychiatrist from the city, on condition of anonymity.

Marketing representatives said that they assure joy tours to doctors if the medical practitioners manage to sell products of certain value.

"Everything depends on sales they promote and on an average of 20-25 per-cent incentive is allotted to doctor. We make a group of ten or more doctors and send them on all paid foreign tours. However, this happens in case of general practitioners, Ayurvedic and Homeopathic practitioners who also prescribe allopathy drugs, mostly in outskirts of Hyderabad and other districts. Most of the super specialty doctors don't agree to this. But we sponsor Continous Medical Education (CME) programmes of some senior doctors," said V Srinivas Rao, area sales manager with a prominent pharmaceutical firm.

Doctors from the city said that they have to renew their medical practise registration every five years and one of the condition they have to meet is attendance to Continous Medical Education (CME) programmes which shows they are updating their knowledge. Points are allotted fo attending CMEs.

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Generic medicines cost anywhere 70 per-cent lesser than branded medicines. However, senior doctors who are important members in doctors association, on condition of anonymity, said that they do not prescribe generic medicines even if high valued 'gifts' are offered by pharmaceutical firms as their entire practise is at stake.

"Lets say we prescribe a generic drug whose quality is not assured and if the health ailment is not cured or brought under control with use of the generic medicine, patients will blame the doctor for it. Soon, word spreads around that doctor is inefficient and number of paitents will come down. To avoid this worrying situation, we chose to prescribe branded drugs as pharmaceutical firms maintain quality and efficacy of drugs to sustain in the market," said a doctor on condition of anonymity.

The senior medical practitioners said that incentives for prescribing branded medicines are next to nill and though incentives are good if they prescribe generic drugs, they would not go for it risking their career.

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