Doctor-Patient Relationship Hindered By Direct-to-Consumer Drug Ads, Op-Ed Says

Direct-to-consumer prescription drug advertising "has become part of our pill culture," making it difficult for physicians to "control" their relationships with patients, Ivan Oransky, editor of the online medical magazine Praxis Post, writes in a USA Today op-ed. A 1997 survey found that more than one-third of patients requested a medication they had seen advertised on television, but Oransky writes that the "troubling" aspect of advertising is the number of doctors who will not "just say no" to patients asking for specific drugs. Some doctors grant patient requests out of fear of "los[ing] credibility," Oransky says. Steven Findlay, director of research at the National Institute for Health Care Management, said, "We have a lot of data that suggest that physicians ... roll over and prescribe the drug that's requested." While the FDA regulates the ads, and groups such as the American Medical Association are "understandably concerned" about the advertisements' affect on the doctor-patient relationship, Oransky says the "real issue" is that "too many doctors," under the "ticking managed care clock ... can't or won't spend the time necessary to make a correct diagnosis." Noting that banning such advertisements "cuts close" to First Amendment rights violations, Oransky concludes, "Doctors need to stand firm and do what's right in the long term clinically for their patients, not what's right in the immediate term to avoid angering the demanding ones. The buck stops here, where the pen hits the prescription pad" (Oransky, USA Today, 7/5).