January 2002: Merck Uses Detailed Information on Doctor’s Prescribing Habits to Market Company’s Drugs

Beginning no later than January 2002, Merck provides its sales staff with detailed information on the prescribing habits of individual doctors, or as they like to call them, “customers.” The data—purchased by Merck from an outside company—allows sales representatives to see how many prescriptions each of their customers writes for any given medication. The sales person can see which customers are prescribing large quantities of Merck drugs and which ones aren’t, indicating to the rep which customers need to be worked on the most. Furthermore, each doctor has a “Merck Potential,” which is a “dollar estimate of each prescriber’s total prescribing volume that can realistically be converted to Merck prescriptions.” Bonuses for reps are based on the overall sales and Merck market shares for their respective sales territories. So the more Merck drugs their customers prescribe, the more money they make. [Merck, 1/2002 ; Office of Representative Henry A. Waxman, 5/5/2005, pp. 13-14 ]