In a transfer that may permit them to promote medication on to sufferers, some drugmakers are stepping into the telehealth enterprise.
SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Some main pharmaceutical firms are stepping into the telehealth enterprise. That would permit sufferers to skip a go to with their common physician and let firms promote their medication on to customers. However is that a good suggestion? NPR prescribed drugs correspondent Sydney Lupkin reviews.
SYDNEY LUPKIN, BYLINE: Pfizer says it is launching a telehealth platform known as Pfizer For All. By means of it, customers can get a restricted collection of Pfizer merchandise, COVID assessments, vaccines, and migraine drugs from begin to end. Pfizer is partnering with a number of current telehealth and supply firms, together with Instacart, to meet orders. Individuals can use the Pfizer web site to e book appointments with on-line well being care suppliers, get prescriptions, after which fill them. Here is Dr. Ben Rome of Harvard College.
BEN ROME: That is completely different than, you recognize, sometimes the place it’s a must to have your prescription despatched out of your physician to a pharmacy or a mail order pharmacy or an in-person brick-and-mortar pharmacy, and now they’re making an attempt to kind of minimize out a number of the middleman items there.
LUPKIN: The Pfizer platform mirrors an analogous direct-to-consumer providing Eli Lilly launched earlier this 12 months for its diabetes, weight problems and migraine medication. Lilly mentioned final week that it’s going to additionally offer vials of its weight problems drug Zepbound at a steep low cost, however just for individuals paying out of their very own pocket and never utilizing their insurance coverage. Rome analyzed the Lilly well being care web site in an article for the medical journal JAMA. He mentioned some sufferers will discover the direct-to-consumer mannequin handy. Nonetheless, there are dangers that sufferers utilizing drug firm telehealth providers could possibly be pushed towards a drug simply because it is Lilly’s or Pfizer’s.
ROME: We all know from tons and many analysis that when there’s sort of interactions between drug firms and docs that docs usually tend to prescribe costly drugs possibly in conditions the place they are not crucial.
LUPKIN: The drug firms say the telehealth suppliers will prescribe medicines based mostly on what’s greatest for sufferers. Dr. Robert Steinbrook, the top of well being analysis at Public Citizen, a nonprofit shopper advocacy group, is not so certain.
ROBERT STEINBROOK: I simply do not suppose this can be a good concept. I perceive the motivations and the advertising and marketing features of this. However to me, it is simply one thing which might contribute to additional fragmentation of care.
LUPKIN: He says sufferers ought to go to their major care physicians when potential. These are the docs who know them greatest, know their medical histories and might actually speak about all of the well being dangers and advantages of a given drug because it matches into that affected person’s care. And typically, he says, physicians can provide options that do not contain pharmaceutical merchandise in any respect. Sydney Lupkin, NPR Information.
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