You might look good in that suit

Good thing about the job is that it gives us plenty of free time to detail your mother.

 

Many posters here are concerned shareholders, not just drug reps. Everyone has the right to "bother" as well as post their opinions and concerned when it comes to jnj mismanaging their invested money. Take a finance or math class instead of basketweaving with your jnj-sponsored continuing education benefit. Idiot.

 

This is a forum for reps, not frustrated, jealous cubicle nerds that are collecting a check and doing nothing back in Raritan or Titusville or Horsham. Start your own board for that if you are so "bothered." Or post on the message board for Yahoo finance which is where share holders go to gripe. Truth is, those shareholders on that site are just as biting against your boy Willie and his company as the field is.

 

You seem to be complaining to people who can't do anything about this. Perhaps you should take your concerns to the decision makers?

 

The bad publicity and press on JNJs violations and fraudulent activities just keep on coming, one right after the other. JNJ's golden days are long gone.

 

Heard that with the next round of layoffs a lot more dms will be demoted to rep positions working in areas that they never covered as managers. If they don't like traveling far for a lesser rep salary, then they will to just leave on their own accord and jnj won't have to pay severance. Companies do this to reps when they want them out, now it's happening to deadweight dms they want to get rid of. There's absolutely no need for middle management in the field. Reps here should be able to handle their own territory issues without being babied by a dm. RBDs will have smaller regions and will be the point person for territory issues. There's always a valid reason to get rid of an at-will employee here. Jnj has years worth of documents for every employee available to audit at a moment's notice exactly for this reason, so anyone who tries to sue jnj will be wasting their time and money. JnJ will save a lot of dough by displacing dms and reps they want out.

 

One of the stupidest posts I have ever seen. If a DM goes back to rep, he/she keeps the DM salary.

 

Besides, my manager just got me promoted to Senior Executive Rep, Mr. Smarty Pants. He's a parenial Presidents club winner and recognizes a great rep when he sees one!

 

I know of a dm who got demoted to a rep spot and got a 10% reduction in salary. Said it was well worth it not having to deal with bs from upper management and the district. Loves being a rep and not having to travel for meetings and field days.

 

Drugging America: The drug industry exposed
Sunday, March 27, 2011 - Omkara World by Adam Helfer

March 27, 2011 – Pharmaceuticals are a $650 plus billion dollar a year industry. For years the most profitable business in the U.S. has been the pharmaceutical corporations, which routinely top the annual fortune 500 list. Doctor prescribed drugs support an industry which out-earns the GNP of many nations.

A core attribute to big Pharma’s overwhelming ‘success’ lays in the liaison between the corporations and the ‘symptoms management’ health care industry: The pharmaceutical representative. The men and women we see meeting with physicians, walking into offices with gifts of lunch for the staff, meeting with the doctor while you wait for our appointment.


Gwen Olsen
Gwen Olsen was a top level pharmaceutical rep for some of the biggest in the industry: Johnson & Johnson, Syntex Labs, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Abbott Laboratories and Forest Laboratories.

Through some chilling wake up calls in her tenure, and the tragic drug-related death of her niece, Gwen has dedicated her life to making people aware of the dangers of prescription drugs and how the drug industry manipulates doctors into prescribing, and over prescribing, their drugs.

She is exposing the dark, deep-rooted deception and corruption that is prevalent in this industry.

Gwen Olsens words are powerful. Her message absolutely frightening. Below is a transcript of our conversation as well as a video of Gwen speaking out, including her appearance on a CBS Evening News Eye On Your Children news segment.

Adam Omkara: So you went into the industry with an altruistic mindset and you wanted to help people. When was it made apparent to you that the industry wasn’t based on that altruism, or even healing?

Gwen: Well, it was on the 2nd stage interview with the regional manager. He asked me why I wanted to get into the pharmaceutical industry. I said ‘well I really want to help people, that’s what I want to do’.

He kind of laughed, smiled, and said “Well, I’m not so sure about that. If altruism is what motivates you, then you better join the peace corp." Then he smiled, turned around to his desk and started working on his calculator. He said “however, if money is what motivates you, let me tell you how you can retire a millionaire from this job young lady.”

He went into delineating my benefits, stock options, and it all turned into a big blur for me. I saw dollar signs. It sounded pretty good to a 26 year old. So, that’s how initially I was told it wasn’t altruistic.

Adam Omkara: And you said you were actually trained to misinform people- Can you elaborate on that?

Gwen: Well, initially when you start pharmaceutical sales training you are taken into the home office for a sort of ‘indoctrination’ that’s 2-6 weeks of intensive training. That’s where the industry turns representatives into psychological profilers and people pleasers. The reps learn how to be people analyzers, so they know how to best influence people. We were taught in training sessions called ‘knee to knees’ and ‘toe to toes’ where you have a line of reps that play the doctor and opposing lines that play the rep position.

You have to learn verbatim the company’s position and their marketing lines- you can’t even vary from that. You practice and practice until it flows naturally and doesn’t sound rehearsed.

I started recognizing really that I was being trained to divert doctor’s attention away from his/her concerns. So, I was learning to misinform and disinform- to counter the doctor’s valid concerns. I wasn’t trained to say “this drug is bad for that patient” or “watch out for this drug’s interaction with that one." Any information perceived as a negative was always being candy coated.

In fact many times we would be called into a meeting when a new sales piece was being introduced. Managers would ask us questions on what aspects of the piece we received the most objections on. What were the parts that raised the most concern? After we gave the marketing department that feedback, the next period they would come up with a different layout that had manipulated and minimized the objectionable data. So, it was a constant set of circumstances where I began to see that I wasn’t allowed to give good information and I wasn’t given good information to share.

The industry knows that many of their drugs aren’t safe and that they don’t heal people. In fact, some drugs are designed to make symptoms worse later on.

When I started becoming pro-active and began to ask too many critically intelligent questions, management objected and discouraged me. I was frequently met with answers such as “We do it that way because we can", or "We sell more pills that way.”

It was apparent my inquiries were not welcomed!

It was almost like being in the military, in fact, many of my ex-managers had been in the military. Many are hired because they have great work ethics and they don’t ask a lot of questions. Military personnel are used to working on a ‘need to know’ basis.

Adam Omkara: How did you come to an awakening towards the industry. Did it all hit you all of the sudden, or was it a slow process?

Gwen: I realized early on I was in a position where I could harm people; In a position where I could literally take lives. My grand realization arrived when I started promoting a specific new drug.

I went to a national sales meeting for this new drug launch and was told the wonders on how it was going to help people. We immediately were sent out into our individual territories to get support for the new drug with key prescribing physicians.


The dark truth of the drug industry
Drug reps are given profiles of all the physicians in the territory on what their ‘writing habits’ are, i.e. their general personality, their prescribing habits like whether they are high volume prescribers or early adopters, or late adopters/skeptics.

Reps have all this information available before making a sales call so that they know how to approach the doctor and can develop a sales strategy.

So there was one doctor in my territory that was profiled as a “late adopter/skeptic.” That meant he was going to be difficult for me to get him to prescribe my new drug.

The marketing plan developed at launch emphasized to the sales force that as a last ditch effort, if a doctor didn’t want to write prescriptions for the new product, then the rep was to ask for just one patient- the most difficult patient that the doctor had. The theory was that if the drug worked for them, then the doctor would be more likely to use it in his broader practice later.

I did my presentation and the doctor told me his policy was he didn’t prescribe a new drug until it’s been on the market for at least a year. He had been burned on new drugs before.

However, with some hesitation he agreed to try it in his most difficult patient who had failed all other therapies and I left him samples.

Some time later I got a call from my district manager. I was being sent out to gather information for an Adverse Drug Reaction (ADR) report, as there has been a death in my territory from our new drug and it was a patient of that doctor. And guess what- it was his mother! She had gone into renal failure and died from complications in dialysis. I was devastated!

After I went to get the ADR info, it took me almost 6 months to work up the nerve to go see that man again and look him in the eye. I was acutely aware that it had been my over-zealous and persistent marketing of the product that had influenced him to do something against his better judgment and, as a consequence, his own mother had paid with her life!

I’ll never forget his angry, terse remark to me, “Well, I see you all put a lot more effort into your marketing plan than you did your drug research and development!” What could I say to him after that?

That was my very first clue as a young rep that my job had serious ramifications.
Once this happened more and more things started falling into place. So with that awareness I began to see the job and industry with new eyes…

Adam Omkara: And no one seems to questions this? Why don’t you think there is more of this awakening or questioning? Representatives, psychiatrists, doctors, managers? Is there some desensitization process that comes into play that’s very effective? Where does the disconnect come into play and how is it sustained?

Gwen: Yes, there is definitely a desensitization process. A re-programming if you will. The indoctrination is usually done at the home office during the initial training and is similar to how they do boot camp in the military. They tear you down physically and psychologically, reps are kept up late nights studying for exams, preparing presentations, filming videos, deprived of sleep, deprived of good nutrition, required to dress to the nines and constantly compete with one another as they are being watched and evaluated in the corporate fish bowl.

It’s a very psychologically grueling, but effective grooming environment.

Then when they release you back into your sales territory, you have this false sense of bravado feeling like you’re someone special who is going to go out and help the world. It’s literally a brainwashing process.

What they are effectively doing is trying to weed out the mavericks and break the weak ones. The one’s who can’t handle the job long term and, therefore, will be a wasted investment.

Adam Omkara: Do you know if the same basic training policy is upheld for other companies?


Gwen: I worked for five different companies and it happened in every single one. And I was no flunkee who lost my job and then started bashing the industry. I was the best of the best and performed at the top 3% in each company that I worked for full time.

Usually, as soon as a rep starts asking too many questions or makes unnecessary waves with management they are easily dispensed of and told there are plenty more eligible people behind them waiting to take their job. The only reason I was tolerated was because of how valuable I was to them.

I always made my district and managers look good at the bottom line.

Adam Omkara: And what about the psychiatrists and that industry? Do they not question?

Gwen: You really want me to be honest? The pharmaceutical industry makes so much fun of the psychiatric profession that it’s not even funny. They actually refer to psychiatrists as ‘drug whores.’ The reason they call them that is because they have no loyalty to any one company or product, it’s whoever is paying them at the time.

I was told in the initial training I received to sell antipsychotic drugs that most psychiatrists got into the field of psychiatry in order to figure out why they were so screwed up. There were definitely some very odd birds! So yeah, they were not held in very high regard. My colleagues and I looked down on them as though they were a ‘lower class’ quasi-physician. Because we knew that they didn’t do anything scientifically, it was all subjective diagnosis in nature, dependent on third-party observation of symptoms.

So they were easy to sell drugs to. Most psychiatrists are so ego-driven they would literally recommend anything when given the appropriate sales pitch!

In this day and age, most psychiatrists don’t use talk therapy anymore- just 15 minute appointments, what are your symptoms, try this and come back in a month. You’re lucky if you can get counseling these days (under coverage) and children rarely get it.

So, you can see there is a huge incentive to continue the psychopharmacologic-based treatment paradigm. Because if this huge house of cards actually implodes there will be all these doctors that have no way to practice in psychiatry anymore. Without drug therapy, how would they practice?

Parents Beware: Children have become the largest demographic for the Pharmaceutical Industry.

Adam Omkara: So what are you working on now?

Gwen: I’m presently contributing to an anthology of works, called “Drugging our Children: How Profiteers are Pushing Antipsychotics on our Youngest,” coming out this fall.

A Medco Health Solutions Report in 2009 showed children to be the largest growth demographic for the pharmaceutical industry. Prescriptions in kids grew at 4X the rate of the general population. Antipsychotics were the #1 drug category in both 2008 and 2009 making $14.6 billion each year.

Furthermore, there are 1100 people who enter the social security disability rolls on a daily basis because of mental illness. Of that number, 250 are kids.

Adam Omkara: Do you have a message for the parents?

Gwen: Yes, my campaign is one of informed consent. I’m not anti-drugs, but I am anti- misinformation, and parents have been sorely misinformed, if not straight out lied to in many circumstances. My message is for parents to be pro-active.

Stop taking people’s words for things- start doing your own due diligence and research when it comes to drugging your kids. Remember that it not only takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to protect one. We all have to do our part!

Adam Omkara: Thank you very much Gwen

Please visit Gwen’s website at www.gwenolsen.com for more information.

 

OPTIMIZERx Corporation Announces SampleMD Update

ROCHESTER, MI--(Marketwire - March 29, 2011) - OPTIMIZERx Corporation (OTCBB: OPRX) announced news relating to its 4Q 2010 launch of SampleMD -- its proprietary technology that provides physicians a more efficient alternative to storing drug samples by printing and electronically distributing prescription trial vouchers, co-pay coupons and other patient information right from their computers.

Pharmaceutical manufacturers contracted with SampleMD include Merck & Co., Inc., Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation, Genentech Inc., Abbott Laboratories, Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Bayer HealthCare Pharmaceuticals Inc., Sunovion Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Warner Chilcott Company LLC.

Additionally, the Company is in various stages of contractual development with other leading pharmaceutical and biotech companies and is now leveraging its equity partner Physicians Interactive LLC to promote SampleMD through their highly established sales force.
The Company is very pleased by the number of blue chip companies who have recognized and signed up for SampleMD as a new way to reach more physicians at point of care. However, the company has recognized delays associated with extensive legal and compliance reviews that are commonly associated with innovative technology which provides new promotional processes. In response, the internal account team is working to streamline the approval process to fully ramp up promotional and revenue maximization.

Utilization of SampleMD within its initial rollout phase has already generated promotion and distribution of over 16,000 vouchers and co-pay coupons since its launch, with almost 5,000 in March alone and a redemption rate of 18% -- more than three times the industry average. We expect these numbers to dramatically escalate as we expand the number of participating brand manufacturers and fully ramp up our network of participating prescribers and health systems.

SampleMD's integration within Allscripts, the nation's largest ePrescribing provider, EMR platforms provides access to over 100,000 providers, right at point of ePrescribing, in addition to our leading health systems like Emory, Carilion, St. Barnabas and Ochsner whom are using SampleMD as their exclusive alternative to traditional drug samples.
The Company is also pursuing integration within other ePrescribing and Electronic Health Records enterprise companies who can provide an even larger base of healthcare providers.

The company's goal is to become the standard in delivering patient savings and support right at the most critical time: when the doctor is prescribing.
"With almost 200 million prescriptions electronically prescribed this year -- and that number is expecting to double in each of the next few years -- integration of SampleMD's eVouchers and promotional services will provide us the potential for huge growth," added David Harrell, Chairman and Founder of OptimizeRx, "We have proven SampleMD's ability to help the manufacturer increase product utilization while enabling doctors to help their patients better afford and stay on the medicines they need."

For more information about SampleMD, please go to www.samplemd.com.

About OPTIMIZERx Corporation
OPTIMIZERx Corp. provides unique consumer and physician platforms to help patients better afford and comply with their medicines and healthcare products, while offering pharmaceutical and healthcare companies effective ways to expand patient awareness, access and adherence to their brands. For more information, please go to www.optimizerxcorp.com.
This press release contains forward-looking statements within the definition of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended and such section 21E of the Securities Act of 1934, amended. These forward-looking statements should not be used to make an investment decision. The words 'estimate,' 'possible' and 'seeking' and similar expressions identify forward-looking statements, which speak only as to the date the statement was made. The company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether because of new information, future events, or otherwise. Forward-looking statements are inherently subject to risks and uncertainties, some of which cannot be predicted, or quantified. Future events and actual results could differ materially from those set forth in, contemplated by, or underlying the forward-looking statements. The risks and uncertainties to which forward-looking statements are subject include, but are not limited to, the effect of government regulation, competition and other material risks.
Company contact:
Dave Lester
CEO
Optimizerx Corporation Inc.
248-651-6568

 

You don’t need any reps, ipads, ipods, itunes imacs or iphones. You don’t need anybody but a team of programmers and IT techs.

The answer: rent time sharing on the IBM artificial intelligence computer Watson.

According to IBM: Watson is a workload optimized system designed for complex analytics, made possible by integrating massively parallel POWER7 processors and the IBM DeepQA software to answer virtually any Jeopardy question (ane presumably a query to a rep) in under three seconds, faster than a drug rep can unbox a pepperoni pizza. Watson is made up of a cluster of ninety IBM Power 750 servers (plus additional I/O, network and cluster controller nodes in 10 racks) with a total of 2880 POWER7 processor cores and 16 Terabytes of RAM. Each Power 750 server uses a 3.5 GHz POWER7 eight core processor, with four threads per core. The POWER7 processor’s massively parallel processing capability is an ideal match for Watson’s IBM DeepQA software which is embarrassingly parallel (that is a workload that executes multiple threads in parallel).

Watson doesn’t require food, drink, sleep, a company car or an expense account.

Docs could dial into Watson through a secure password protected system, and the rep is history.

 

Me too! I have access to every department, nurse manager, hospitalist, CC/pulm, pharmacist - staff, clinical and admin. Been at this 12 years and delivered good results.
Work like a fox, not an ox!

 

Detail reps and their dms are obsolte.

 

Well not at COBI, Mr. Smarty pants. I am making a BIG difference in the lives of my doctor's patients and even more so for my manager and RBD, who say I am the best rep in the whole country. Someday my child will go to private schools and end up with her being your child's boss. The company pays me a lot of money because I get the job done no matter what it takes because I beleive in COBI! I was pormoted becasue of this and I expect to be promoted again after I make Presidents club again this year. I guess we wont see you on the big trip Mr. Smarty Pants!

 

Biotech sales is for people that want to make good money and have tons of time outside work to get other things done... start a business, care for their children, coach sports... etc. Ive been in this industry 15 years. It took me about 5 years and tons of work experiments to figure out that bonus and success in this job is pure luck. Once you figure that out... you play the game a couple time a month during ride-alongs and meetings, and do the least amount of work possible. Use your brain to figure out a way to make the most $ per hour. If you want to make more per hour, work 1 hour less per day...etc.. until you are making what you think you deserve. That's what everyone around here does...showing up only when necessary, collecting good paychecks and and focusing on their second careers and lives.

 

A Democrat! And proud of it! Drug reps should have unionized years ago!!

 

I dont' know what all of you are talking about! I love J&J and my DM says that I am the bestest ever! I have been P-Club (what does the the P even mean, really, lol!) the last 5 years and my boss says if I can keeping riding big ships I will be a very lucky girl!

I talk to doctors everyday! And even on days when I don't talk to doctors I am in Starbucks! And I know everybody at SBees! And you don't think they won't buy drugs someday! That's good marketing! Duh! Of course they will!! : )

And if you guys don't think "details" are important aznymore, you are wrong! I pay attention to all the details, my clothes are always pressed, my bra firm, and my legs "a showin'!". DM says that he likes this and so do the doctors!!!! hehe

Trainign is awwwweessommmeee!!! They tell you that J&J products are the best, aaaand they RRRRR!!!!!! Did you know that I actually SAFFE lives!!!!!!! OMG!!! OmG!!!

Last week Doctor told me that I was the best ever at giving details!!! ; ) heheh He tells me I can only come back into his office unwess I be wwweeeelllll quite and show him all my samples!!!!! he is sooooo H.O.T. DDeeuuhhhh!!!!!

He says if I ever get fired he will take care of me!!! I don't know...should I believe him?????

J&J RockS!!!! So you guys are pretty NOT hot!!!!

 

..ok so you take offense..AND??........not all but alot of reps with science OR MEDICAL backrounds(THESE PEOPLE ARE Also refered to as" wing nuts"')) thaT I have encountered in over 14 years being in the industry couldnt sell JACK!!...Inluencing a physicinas prescribing habits is a skill and a beautiful thing to see from a skilled sales rep when it is in action!!...so stop player hating slappy!!