All Posts Tagged With: "drug samples"
Free drug samples beneficial
By Dallas Woodhouse
Wednesday, July 16
updated 3:00 am
As an insulin-dependent diabetic, I have benefited from many free drug samples over the years. These sample medications have been helpful for my doctor and me to develop a treatment plan to fight heart disease, kidney failure, vision loss and other complications of the disease that killed my father just a few years ago. It could soon be much harder for doctors and patients to develop similar treatment plans due to a bizarre ruling by tax collectors.
North Carolina has seen more than its fair share of questionable taxes over the years. Revenue offices and legislatures are always looking for creative ways to raise extra money without raising too many eyebrows. But the taxation of prescription drug samples that has recently come to light is truly confounding.
The move by Guilford County to demand that Greensboro-based Eagle Physicians and Associates pay taxes on its supply of free drug samples has surprised medical and tax professionals alike. Many of them did not have any idea stocks of free pharmaceutical samples were fair game for the tax collector. Neither, it is safe to say, did the public. But the Guilford tax office pointed to a state decree to make its case.
In 2006 the N.C. Department of Revenue released a directive that said counties should tax doctors’ offices’ supplies of drug samples. The argument was that, because the samples are given away and not sold, they do not constitute inventory - which would be nontaxable. The drugs were instead to be considered office supplies, which can be taxed as part of a company’s overall property tax burden.
If it sounds a bit odd and confusing, you’re not alone. Apparently many doctors’ offices didn’t even know about the directive and so have not been paying taxes on their free drug samples. It doesn’t appear - as the novelty of the Guilford County controversy would suggest - that county tax offices elsewhere have been pressing the issue.
But with the hoopla over the Eagle audit, medical providers across the state are taking note. With malpractice insurance and other costs of doing business continuing to rise, medical professionals are finding themselves in an increasingly uncertain financial position. The last thing they need is a larger tax burden. If doctors are forced to shell out in order to give out drug samples, in the end patients could be the ones to lose out. Doctors might just choose not to provide the medicines altogether.
Free drug samples are useful for several reasons.
The primary one is they allow doctors to tailor treatments to individual patients by allowing them to try out a drug before paying for an entire prescription. It allows doctors to determine the right treatment for a particular patient, without making the patient go through the trouble - and expense - of filling various prescriptions. Also, when time is of the essence and a doctor is not sure a patient will get a regular prescription filled quickly enough, the free samples are an effective way to begin treatment instantly.
Medical clinics serving lower-income patients also use the free samples to provide treatment to patients who otherwise might be unable to afford the proper medicine. It isn’t the best solution to the dilemma of prescription drug access for the poor, but right now it is the best, and the only option many folks have. Let’s not take that away.
Fortunately, help may be on the way. The state Senate’s property tax bill (SB 1878) includes an amendment to exempt free drug samples from taxation. The bill is making its way through the legislature this week. Let’s hope it ends up on the governor’s desk, signed. Many people like me, with chronic conditions like diabetes, are counting on it.
Dallas Woodhouse is director of Americans for Prosperity-North Carolina.
Drug Samples to Doctors
New York Times
To the Editor:
“Seducing the Medical Profession” (editorial, Feb. 2) questions, among other things, the value of pharmaceutical research companies’ distributing free samples to doctors and clinics. That’s unfortunate and could negatively affect patients who rely upon the $16 billion worth of medicines distributed each year.
Many uninsured and low-income patients benefit from these free samples, which often serve as a safety net.
We believe that pharmaceutical companies should not offer or provide anything to doctors that would interfere with the independence of their prescribing practices.
That’s why the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America issued voluntary guidelines that explicitly spell out that all interactions with health practitioners be focused on informing them about products, providing scientific information and supporting medical research and education.
UPMC adopts online drug sample ordering system
Healthcare IT News
PITTSBURGH - The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center is implementing an online system for distributing drug samples to its physician offices, hospital-based clinics and outpatient pharmacies.
The UPMC eSample Center will allow physicians to order available samples, vouchers and coupons via a Web-based system accessible through UPMC’s intranet.
Described as a “virtual sample closet,” the system will be developed by MedManage Systems Inc. , a Bothell, Wash. -based provider of online prescription drug sampling technology.
Development of the eSample Center is a direct result of an industry relations policy adopted in February by UPMC and the University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health Sciences. Barbara Barnes, MD, vice president of sponsored programs, research support and continuing medical education at UPMC, said the university is committed to ensuring that interactions with the drug and medical device industries produce benefits for patient care, research and medical education.
Drug Samples: Accountability and Control Are Essential to Reducing Liability Risk
The SCPIE Companies
Sample medications can benefit patients by saving them money, thereby strengthening the goodwill they feel toward their physician. But when a medical practice’s management of samples (or any other medications) becomes too informal, the laxity can put the physician, office staff and patient at risk.
Drug samples often move from drug rep to office staff to physician without documentation or accountability. The liability risk issues involved include lack of appropriate tracking (and the problem of theft it can facilitate), dispensing of meds that are not in childproof containers and inattention to expiration dates.
The Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) requires that medical institutions have a policy and procedure related to the control of drug samples, and that such samples be handled with the same level of accountability and security as other prescription medications.
Preserving the Personal Touch In Drug Sampling
Pharmaceutical & Medical Packaging News
Physicians and consumers favor traditional sampling practices, even though e-sampling solutions are providing alternative channels for sample ordering and for disbursement of vouchers and coupons. And though inefficient distribution often leaves doctors with too few or too many samples, drug firms’ spending on sampling has not diminished. These findings were reported by speakers at the recent Healthcare Compliance Packaging Council’s Annual National Symposium on Patient Compliance.
“When the PDMA rules [requiring the tracking of sample distribution] went into effect in 1988, there was a lot of discussion about getting out of sampling. But industry, if anything, has increased its sampling,” reported Ronald Buzzeo, the chief regulatory officer at BuzzeoPDMA (Richmond, VA).
Conference panelists said that e-sampling is gaining momentum in supporting cost-effective sample targeting and tracking. Marketers for example, can attract physicians by bundling e-sampling with resources such as e-detailing and continuing medical education (eCME). Consumers will print out more sample vouchers as they engage online resources for healthcare information. Pharmacies can then capture voucher redemption data providing marketers with insights on sample disbursement.
Yet doctors and consumers appear to be committed to traditional methods. Doctors prefer to have samples delivered by sales reps. And sample packets handed out by physicians often influence whether patients will fill a prescription, according to survey results presented by DataMonitor (New York City).
Treat Medication Samples with Respect
Drug samples are given away by drug reps as a way to gain access to physicians. Reps hope to influence doctors to write prescriptions for insured patients whom they hope will become long-term users of the product. Pharma companies aren’t targeting the uninsured or the poor and why should they do so with samples? Patient assistance programs –not sampling campaigns– are the mechanism to get drugs into the hands of those who can’t afford them.
Free Viagra, Health & Drug Samples
iDontPay.com
Free VIAGRA® If your doctor does not have free samples of Viagra, call Pfizer at 1-888-733-2009 to leave your name and address. They will send you a free 6-pill trial voucher. If your doctor decides that Viagra is right for you, he or she can write you a prescription for Viagra and attach your voucher to it. You may then redeem your prescription and voucher for a 6 pill free sample of Viagra at a local retail pharmacy. (US only)
Use of Drug Sample Medications
Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine
Wayne S. Strouse, MD
Pen Yan, NY
To the Editor: I read with interest and some concern the article by Zweifler et al in the 2002 September-October issue of the JABFP (Zweifler J, Hughes S, Schafer S, et al. Are Sample Medications Hurting the Uninsured? J Am Board Fam Pract 2002; 15:361–6). The only conclusion I reach after reading the study is that we still do not know and that this study has added little to our knowledge.
I will state my bias at the onset. I give out samples—lots of them—to my Medicare patients without medication coverage and to my uninsured patients, as well as to some of my insured patients who are on so much medicine as to make even the co-payments prohibitive. I realize doing so is much easier in my private solo practice than it would be in a large clinic. Therein lies my first objection—the data are not necessarily generalizable.
In addition, it appears patients using samples were required to have a follow-up appointment to get more supplies. This financial cost to the uninsured patient would be expected to be prohibitive, even if a sliding scale were offered. A fairer way to compare the effect of using sample medications with outcomes from filling prescription medications would be to allow patients to call in for “refills” of samples without the need to be seen. We do this frequently at my office with good results. Patients are less likely to be noncompliant (and thus have higher blood pressures). The medication outcomes will not be evenly comparable, because some patients are embarrassed to come to the office frequently to pick up their samples, but it makes any comparison fairer.