Pharma Reps are no longer needed

Ten or twenty years ago pharma reps were needed to provide information and product samples to physician’s offices but that is simply not the case today. With the advent of EMR almost all physician offices now have a broadband internet connection in their office. The FDA could easily create a physician specific web portal with which they can push out via email new product information, label updates and preapproved journal articles containing relevant off-label information directly to the physician without the involvement a pharmaceutical representative.

This portal could also be used to submit sample requests when they are needed. It is generally the office staff who monitors sample levels and tells the pharma rep what to leave and this doesn’t need to change. The staff could now just enter what they need into the portal for the physician to approve or not approve. The FDA can then send these requests directly to the Pharma companies who can could mail the samples directly to the physician’s office.

This is the only way to ensure that physicians are getting fair and balanced information on the products that they are using to treat their patients with. It takes out all the sales tactics that pharma reps use which have absolutely no place in the practice on medicine.

 

Would there at least be a picture of a young, attractive, former cheerleader dressed in a low cut blouse and a short skirt for me to ogle on the web site while I am signing for my samples? I mean, what is the poor girl going to do when she finds out that you can’t make 100k working four hours a day in any other profession?

 

Look at the bright side. She may be less likely to reject the unwanted advances of an overweight, balding physician when she is waiting on you at that fine dining restaurant instead of taking you to it.

 

Let’s be honest for a second. How many people who have actually promoted pharmaceutical products have not seen either a colleague or a competitor make vastly overreaching statements about their product or a competitor’s product? How many reps have felt pressured by sales management to talk about off label information in order to differentiate your product from your competitors and gain market share?

They can disguise it as trying to "educate the physicians" on the most up to date information so their patients can benefit from the glory that is your product but you know it really has nothing to do with patient care. It is all about driving market share and boosting profits just like every other sales job in the world. The difference is that if the guy selling TV’s is not honest you are not in danger of developing a serious health issue up to and including death.

The bottom line is that is really is no place for “Gamesmanship” in the promotion of Pharmaceutical products but as long as these companies operate on a market share incentive based plan that is just what you are going to get.

 

The industry really needs to blow up and restructure itself. The reputation and loss of credibility from the pure greed that permeates the whole business structure will never result in productivity and efficiency.

I see reps sitting in the public areas of my hospital all the time so the wifi traces back their location to HO as they sit doing their tracking metrics. It's just ridiculous that the status quo is still going on!

Geez, think outside the box pharma and find a new business model! Regain some credibility bc salesmanship died at least a decade or two ago.

 

I know GSK was piloting an incentive plan that was not based on MS growth but on product knowledge and feedback from offices. It was only a small group of Hospitals reps who were doing it but I never heard if they rolled it out to the rest of their salesforce.

 

Reps are still needed for job justification for sales management.

 

This is very true.
Also if one company gets rid of their reps their competitors will have a field day spreading all kinds of misinformation and taking full advantage of the situation. It is like a salesforce arms race. As long as you have yours we will have ours.

 

Interesting, yes .Good business model-heck to that no.

 

Reps are still needed for the moneyhole that is HR and Compliance. No reps; no need for redundant time and money wasters in compliance. You hate us because we make more money and have better lives than you miserable people. Getting in front of doctors and having a discussion that changes their prescribing habits is no easy task. If it was, you'd do it and make more money. You can't so you beat on on the field.

 

As sole sourcing and monopolies are being formed, commercialized medicine will be over in a matter of 5 years.

 

Duh, PORNO!!!

 

Porn doesn't pay as well as it use to. Too much free content because of stupid girls who think the video they made with their boyfriend will stay "private."

 

Yea they have their entire sales force in this model for a few years now and GSK has horribly underperformed and missed numerous sales goals and street expectations . The model is an epic failure

 

The FDA and lazy doctors are a bigger problem than the relatively few sales reps who misrepresent their products. Limiting scientific exchange from reps who actually studied the published literature and understood the science and "sold" was part of the problem. The industry has gone from having sales reps who could actually help doctors and patients to sales robots who can only say exactly what is already in the product label. The limiting of speech is hurting the practice of medicine, not helping it, and your proposed solution worsens the problem.

 

Too much regulation is the problem.

 

Doctors are really no longer needed because the patient can just look up what they have on the internet or Skype their medical plan nurse and get the answers they need. Great drugs are now over the counter so why see a doctor?

 

The industry of drug reps will morphe into counter clinical detailing with drop off material and in services. Bonus will not be paid but instead set salaries for the job. Mature reps will actually benefit over young

Socialized medicine in the payer market is here. Algorithms and formulas of how pharmaceuticals are used and which ones is becoming a fixed quotient. Co insurance and out of pocket costs are at an all time high. High deductible plans as well as corporations adopting exchange formularies is extreme popular.

This all leads to the end prescriber is not the true or all in important customer anymore.

Jobs in reimbursement will grow and in specialty distribution as well.

Hope this helps paint a more vivid picture of the future.

Signed

3 decade veteran

 

In your "3 decades", it is really simple to see why you failed far more than you reached average results. Average being the key to a "successful" year in your eyes. Congrats on making it three years with zero f***ing clue, clearly three decades at only the largest pharma companies, with products that are on tv. Which also means you had 19 "pods", did not truly know what was going on, and earned far less than real places.

 

this is funny! Great call loser, 2022 thinks you are a biatch… the person who started this thread as well as the person who typed this post are a bunch of head in the sand, die hard liberals who rely on big government to protect them and give them fair and balanced information. NEWS FLASH- just because it’s the government or a public institution does NOT mean they have character and can’t tell lies. THAT mindset is what is wrong with the country… people i government lie JUST AS MUCH IF NOT MORE than the private sector… just pick your damn side, that’s all it is anyways… problem is all those politicians take donor money from those private institutions because their jobs rely on that private sector money… and then those big government types (republicans AND democrats) write laws to grow the pockets of the companies that donate to them.. circle of f-ing life…