“I think we’re doing the right thing,” Dr. [Craig] Hansen said.
Dr. [Nancy] Babbitt said it’s unethical for health-care providers to be influenced by a salesperson or by a company’s brochures or other information. Instead, independent, unbiased information sources should guide what drugs are prescribed to patients, she said.
At Creekside, as many as 20,000 prescriptions are written annually, Babbitt said. Drug companies make concerted efforts to persuade doctors to prescribe their products to their patients.
“It’s unethical for a provider to change our prescription habits based on the desire to sell the product,” she said. “We should be prescribing medicine based on neutral literature.”
Hansen agreed.
“Our job is patient advocacy,” he said. “Their job is selling drugs.”
[Tom Lawrence, "Drug Firm Reps No Longer Welcome at One Rapid City Clinic," Rapid City Weekly News, 2008.01.09]
The Creekside clinic docs are right: the free market has its place, but not in the doctor's office. Medicine should be a no-marketing, no-ads, no-profit zone.
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