HEALTHPatient orders: When patients ask for specific drugsDirect-to-consumer advertising may raise awareness about conditions and treatments, but it also may add a new tension to the physician-patient relationship.By Janice Rosenberg, amednews correspondent. March 19, 2001. It's impossible to miss them. Direct-to-consumer advertisements for prescription pharmaceuticals are everywhere -- sandwiched between segments of nightly newscasts; interleaved in popular magazines among articles on how to be thinner, happier and healthier; and highlighted on dozens of easily accessible Web sites. Between January and November 2000, pharmaceutical companies spent an estimated $1.8 billion on all forms of DTC advertising, according to IMS Health, a health care information company in Westport, Conn. And with new drugs constantly coming on the market, the advertising blitz is unlikely to abate. As a result, patients ask physicians about drugs they've seen advertised. Sometimes their questions provoke unpleasant confrontations, but more often they promote better communication and improve the physician-patient relationship. In some cases, questions inspired by DTC can lead to real improvements in patients' health. "Whether the ads are great or not, they are here to stay," says Richard L. Kravitz, MD, professor of medicine at University of California, Davis School of Medicine and director of the Center for Health Services Research in Primary Care at the University of California, Davis. "We need to push the pharmaceutical industry to educate more and sell less." According to the National Institute for Health Care Management, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to improving the effectiveness, efficiency and quality of America's health care system, the most successfully promoted prescription drugs represent five categories: antidepressants, cholesterol-lowering agents, gastric acid reducers, oral antihistamines and antihypertensives.
[...]
Full text of American Medical News content is available to AMA members and paid subscribers.
Copyright 2001 American Medical Association. All rights reserved.
|
Feature articlesHealth reform review The Massachusetts experience Litigation stress Being sued is personal as well as professional Comprehensive coverage
Most-viewedNov. 23 issueAMA meeting: Delegate vote refines AMA stance on system reform Liability premiums stay stable, but insurers warn this might not last Columns and series
From the vault: 5 years agoState tort reform ballot wins set stage for further battles Nov. 22, 2004 
|
SHARE
