“IDEA” academic detailing bill introduced in Senate, House

04/06/2009

The Senate and House have reintroduced a bill that would send pharmacists and nurses head to head with pharma’s nearly 100,000 sales reps to give doctors unbiased information about prescription drugs.

The Independent Drug Education and Outreach Act of 2009 (S.767 and H.R. 1859) would provide grants to create unbiased educational materials for doctors, and grants to train pharmacists and nurses to make educational office visits to doctors with that information, combating the biased commercial information brought by drug reps.

Since last year when the bill was first filed, academic detailing programs have picked up steam in the states, with Massachusetts, New York, Washington D.C. and Maine all implementing state-wide programs this year. Other states that have proposed academic detailing bills this year include California, Minnesota, and Iowa.  IDEA, if passed, could offer these states – as well as other payors and non-profits who accept no pharmaceutical funding – grants to fund their academic detailing programs.

“Academic detailing,” a concept which relies on the pharmaceutical industry’s own tactic of office visits to share unbiased drug information with physicians and other prescribers, has demonstrated cost savings at the national level in Australia, and in Pennsylvania’s PACE program. The bill, if passed, could have important effects as Congress looks to introduce a health reform proposal in a tight fiscal climate.

IDEA is being sponsored in the Senate by Sen. Herb Kohl (D-WI), Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA), Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Sen. Robert Casey (D-PA), and in the House by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), Rep Frank Pallone (D-NJ), Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA), and Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY).

For more information, check out the Prescription Project’s fact sheet here.