IMS v. Sorrell , July 30, 2008

July 30, 2008

IMS V. SORRELL
FEDERAL COURT, BRATTLEBORO

The State of Vermont seemed to do a better job of rebutting some of the “expert witness” testimony that was carefully crafted by the plaintiff team of lawyers. Mr. Robertson, the Assistant VP for Sales, Planning and Insights for Wyeth provided a lot of insight into how drug detailers are trained and how they operate.
Here’s the number of Wyeth’s sales force in the field- the cover the entire U.S.:
1500 for family practice and internal medicine
300 for psychiatrists
400 for institutions (hospitals and teaching hospitals)
80 for rheumatology
85 for oncology
17 for Hemophilia

Sales reps receive 9-12 months of training which is a combination of home study, online work and classroom training. Most training is geared to having them know what is on the medication package inserts.
According to Robertson Wyeth uses prescriber identifiable data purchased from IMS to “know which physicians it is effective for sales reps to call on, to see which products in our portfolio physicians may have the most interest in.”
It was revealed that the average length of face-to-face interaction between MDs and sales reps is 2 to 2.5 minutes. When asked what purpose giving samples to MDs serves Robertson
said that it is to see if MDs can get the desired therapeutic effect and to titrate dosage.
The Vermont attorney asked Robertson if he considered the drug industry to be competitive. He danced around the question and wouldn’t explicitly state that it was competitive.
Sales reps receive a salary and they “make more money if they achieve or exceed their goals”. Goals are the number of prescriptions in their territory. Supervisors make more money if the sales reps make more money.
Perhaps the most important question asked by the Vermont attorney in relation to the issue of the case “Couldn’t sales reps get the prescriber information they are looking for during a visit to a doctor?” Robertson answered “Yes” but said it would be more “efficient” to buy the prescriber identifiable data.
There was testimony from Scott Tierney, Director of Managed Care Operations for CVS/Caremark, the largest provider of prescriptions in the U.S. CVS provides data to IMS and Verispan and that is a source of revenue for CVS. CVS does not tell MDs that CVS is selling their data but Tierney said they do tell customers of CVS.
There was testimony from Michael Turner, President of the Political and Economic Research Council. He said that the State of Vermont should have followed his recommended procedures to validate reasons for not allowing the use of identifiable data, basically the premise of the section in contention in Act 80. He said the state made unsubstantiated assertions. In order to do what Turner said the state should do would require 9-12 months of work at a cost of $700,000-$900,000. I did not stay for the state’s cross examination of Turner.