Posted by pseudoname on May 23, 2006, at 16:07:21
I went to the Toronto convention of the American Psychiatric Association. In the huge exhibit hall, there were hundreds of displays & booths rented from the APA by various companies.
Several hospitals & state agencies were trying to hire pdocs. Posted salaries were $140k to $180k per year plus "up to" $88k in student-loan payments.
I was assumed to be a pdoc if I didn't correct them. (And I sometimes didn't.)
A man selling a computer-based attention test said it would "help my billing." I could have a non-professional staff member set up and administer the test, then have the patient take a Ritalin (or whatever). Two hours later, you repeat the test, and see if the patient does a lot better. If so, you have "proof" that the drug helps and you write a prescription.
But, he explained, you can charge $59 for the first test, $59 for the second, and something like $100 for the two hours in between (I didn't quite understand that). So you're up to $218 in billing for a few minutes' work by a non-professional and the doc doesn't have to do anything!
After that, I asked at almost every booth, "How does this help my billing?"
Every sales rep knew the answers cold. Up with fees; down with time.
One company had a "chart generation" program. The doc just clicks on various laptop icons while doing a patient interview, and a chart record of the visit is automatically generated in flowing prose like she'd stayed up all night typing: click icons for compliant, depressed, looks sad, worry, & family — you get this: “My patient, Mr. William Demarest, states that he has been compliant in taking his Effexor XR twice a day in the 4˝ weeks since our last appointment together. Bill states that he is still depressed. He looks sad. His appearance thus accords with his stated mood. Bill reports that he has lately been overcome with worry and has had family-related stress....”
(That program was $300 to install and $90 / month to use.)
Another program, by Valant, keeps track online of all billing & accounting for private practice pdocs for 8% of total receipts.
You can get an in-office clinical EEG kit with the electrodes connected to a shower cap thingie for just $20,000. Give one exam per business day, and it'd pay itself off in less than 2 years.
Cyberonics(?), the one that makes the vagal nerve stimulator (VNS), had a huuuuge display. They also bought a little booth across the aisle for one of their successful patients who had written an inspiring hardcover book about his experience. He was there, giving autographed copies away. It wasn't obvious that the one was paying for the other.
A few sales reps volunteered their work histories: 2 were clinical social workers who turned in their welfare clientele for potential multi-$100k salaries in drug sales.
Many of the sales reps were in uniforms: embroidered yellow oxford button-downs for the sleeping pill men. They ran around the hall in packs. They could've been waiters at Chili's gathered to sing happy birthday. Matching green wool suits for the Namenda guys. All of them young, trim, outgoing, and kinda hot. The women also were, I suppose, but I wasn't looking.
In Toronto, I saw the movie "Thank You for Smoking". In it, a fictional tobacco lobbyist always flies coach so that he can talk to young people on the plane. If he gets just ONE of them to try cigarettes, profits from the resulting lifetime of purchases will more than pay for the lobbyist's plane fare, round trip.
If the (I'm guessing) $200,000 booth and the flown-in sales team and all that cr*p they give away get just 35 docs to write scripts for just 20 patients each over the next year for a new drug, with at least a 2-month trial per patient... Yeah, that would pay for the plane fare and everything else. (I assume the $520 cost of my last Effexor bottle was mostly markup.)
Thanks for reading this far. :-)
poster:pseudoname
thread:647397
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20060520/msgs/647397.html