Talk About Conflict of Interest...

Last week I met my Pfizer preceptor and since then have been spending time with him on and off. Allow me to share the insight I've picked up from interacting with him...

My preceptor is a medical outcomes specialist for Pfizer, which is analagous to the medical science liaisons of other pharmaceutical companies. His role is maintaining good relations with PBMs and health plans in order to get Pfizer products on the drug formularies. He goes to the various groups and give presentations on the drugs.

When I first met him, he picked me up at Prime and took me to a nearby restaurant. 2 reasons for this: (1) Prime has policies against pharma people for using space to work on the premises unless invited and (2) my preceptor works from home when he isn't out and about travelling to New York, California, etc. (which is often since he's in charge of national accounts). Pfizer provides his BlackBerry phone, laptop, car + gas and he has a charge card that has made my tummy full =).

His first assignment given to me was the slide deck (aka powerpoint slides) for Toviaz, indicated for overactive bladder. He told me upfront that I can't show anyone the slides (especially my preceptors at Prime) and that I have to give them back to him afterwards. If not, he could lose his job. All information pertaining to Pfizer matters is on extreme lockdown. Extremely! He had also given me a flashdrive containing data for another PBM he does business with and told me not to save the data outside of the flashdrive and not to print the information.

Back to Toviaz--he wanted me to review the slides because the next day he was presenting it AT Prime! So an hour and a half before the presentation I met with him to discuss my thoughts. Another thing I forgot to mention- the slide deck is created by people in marketing, reviewed by scientific experts for soundness and given final approval by legal. There are certain slides that my preceptor HAS to go over, and he cannot alter the slides in any way. Information is tightly controlled. So I challenged my preceptor since the results did not seem to have clinical significance despite being statistically significant. I asked him questions I would normally ask during a drug presentation. He was really good at responding to my questions. You really need to be a good people person to be successful in his line of work.

So the awkward part for me: I arrived at Prime with my Pfizer preceptor. And during the presentation I didn't ask questions since I had already asked him during the prep beforehand. I felt bad I wasn't as active of a participant on Prime's behalf.

Fast forward to yesterday: at one of the clinical meetings at Prime they were discussing the utilization management program for Celebrex. We were told we had to alter the criteria and someone guessed because Pfizer put some restrictions on the rebate contracts. I knew the true reason why because my Pfizer preceptor told me their strategy towards health plans regarding Celebrex. However, I had to keep my mouth shut. Very very difficult!