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A rep's guide to retirement investing.

New York-based Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. and Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble Co. made the top ten in Working Mother magazine's 16th annual list of the "100 Best Companies for Working Mothers," a compilation of corporations that best recognize the value and needs of working families.

Despite the fact that the U.S. antidepressant market grew at a 20% annual rate between 1995 and 2000, the loss of patent exclusivity of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors - beginning with Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co.'s Prozac® (fluoxetine) last August - will likely cause the market for SSRIs and similar drugs to decline for the first time in over a decade, according to Decision Resources Inc., Waltham, MA. Also, novel therapies now under development for depression face greater challenges than previous treatments did.

The nuances of etiquette for business dining.

Pharmaceutical reps want a share of the one thing doctors have very little of: their time. Here's how to get it

New York-based Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. announced that its $7.8 billion acquisition of Wilmington, DE-based DuPont Pharmaceuticals Co. from DuPont is complete. The acquisition, which was announced on June 7, closed on October 1.

The Office of Inspector General for the United States Health and Human Services Administration plans to evaluate the extent of pharmaceutical sales representative gift-giving in 2002, according to its recently released "Fiscal Year 2002 Work Plan."

In response to recent anthrax attacks on the media and the U.S. Senate, U.S. Health and Human Services and West Haven, CT-based Bayer Corp. have reached an agreement for a significant new federal purchase of the antibiotic Cipro™ (ciprofloxacin) at a substantially lowered price. The antibiotic is expected to be available by the end of 2001 and would be used to supplement existing emergency stockpiles for use in the event of a bioterrorist attack.

Most presentation mistakes made by representatives in the field are elementary and may be easily avoided.

The Internet has become a new meeting place for drug companies and doctors, according to the Physician Meeting and Event Audit from Newtown, PA-based Scott-Levin. From February through April 2001, Scott-Levin surveyed its PMEA panel every month to determine the extent of "e-event" activity. More than 3,100 physicians participated in the study; 39% indicated that they had been invited to at least one pharmaceutical company-sponsored event conducted via the Internet.

New medicines in the pipeline for Alzheimer's disease, osteoporosis, arthritis and Parkinson's disease are among the many promising treatments in development for diseases of aging, according to a new survey released by the Washington-based Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.

Relatively small numbers of American physicians are using electronic records or prescribing, and the United States lags behind other English-speaking countries in this regard, according to a survey of physicians conducted by Rochester, NY-based Harris Interactive for the Harvard School of Public Health and the Commonwealth Fund's International Health Care Symposium in 2000. The survey found that the use of electronic systems is much more advanced in Britain, New Zealand and Australia than in the United States. The numbers for Canadian usage were low, however, similar to those in the United States.

Taking steps to grow into a well-rounded professional.

Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson has announced the release of $50 million to fund 94 new research grants, contracts and other projects to reduce medical errors and improve patient safety.

Faced with double-digit healthcare benefit cost increases in 2002, 56% of employers say they will raise employee contributions by as much as or more than their expected cost increases. In addition, more than 70% of employers are considering benefit reductions or an increase in employee co-pays over the next 12 months, according to a survey released by Washington-based consulting firm Watson Wyatt Worldwide.

Life expectancy for the U.S. population reached a record high of 76.9 years in 2000 as mortality declined for several leading causes of death, according to preliminary figures from a report released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Government efforts to trim budgets has put the spotlight on unethical pharma marketing tactics.

The September 11 attacks on the United States caused pharma shares to fall along with others, but as investors switched to safe stocks, considered less susceptible to cyclical consumer trends, they rebounded. On September 12, broker WestLB Panmure raised its recommendation of the pharma sector from "neutral" to "outperform," favoring Sanofi-Synthelabo, Novo-Nordisk, Shire Pharmaceuticals, and GSK.

Sampling is a sales rep's foot in the door to doctors' offices and the quickest way to get products into consumers' hands. That's why reps handed out $5 billion worth of the freebies last year, spending 30 percent of companies' promotional budgets in the process. Despite that huge investment, few product managers can assess its impact on product inventory, consumer demand, prescription rates, or market share. But sampling's greatest failure is its inability to provide the healthcare industry with product-use or patient data.

A growing number of physicians are expressing interest in working in the pharmaceutical industry. Many are motivated by the desire to get as far away from managed clinical care as possible. Others want to broaden their sphere of influence in healthcare-to move from treating one patient at a time to helping an entire patient population. Still others are excited by the chance to participate in well funded cutting-edge innovation or are influenced by colleagues who have moved into pharmaceutical medicine and are vocal about their enhanced career satisfaction.

A new approach to setting goals

Americans who live in the suburbs fare significantly better in many key health measures than those who live in the most rural and most urban areas.

Nonprofit nursing homes provide better care and more nursing care than investor-owned homes, according to a survey of over 13,500 homes nationwide.

The Chicago-based American Medical Association has launched an educational effort to raise awareness of ethical guidelines regarding promotional gifts from medical industry representatives. The 18-month initiative will target physicians, medical students and sales representatives from pharmaceutical, medical device and equipment companies, asking them to comply with guidelines published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1991 (see sidebar) by the AMA's Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs.

Researchers funded by the National Institute of Mental Health have found that an inexpensive program that trains primary care providers to work with patients and mental health specialists to diagnose and properly treat depression can reduce the time that participating patients spend clinically depressed. Over a two-year period, the program reduced the duration of participating patients' depression by well over a month. The training program cost less than $500 per depressed patient and increased the time that the depressed patients spent employed during that two-year period by about four work weeks.

A new report suggests that the most efficient way to increase health insurance coverage is to target subsidies toward low-income workers.

High-tech scanning methods, such as magnetic resonance imaging, and innovations to treat cardiovascular disease were ranked as highly important to the care of patients in a survey of 225 primary care physicians published in Health Affairs (vol. 20, no. 5). At the bottom of the list was bone marrow transplant.

As pharmaceutical companies rely more on sales representatives, reps say they need more training to help them in their jobs.

Premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance have posted the largest increase since 1992, according to an annual survey of employer health benefit plans.

Everyone makes mistakes, but it's learning from them, and changing the way we do what we do, that make us successful.