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The unscheduled visit: Industry is at the door
For some, it comes every week and for some, every day. You may be walking down the hall, going into your office or entering the cath lab when you hear: “Hello, doctor, it’s so and so from X company.” Your gut sinks and your mind begins to race — how to get out of this conversation or room? The greeting comes from a sales/device representative you’d least like to see, and now you are wishing you took another turn or perhaps got paged. You smile and ponder how best to handle this awkward moment.
Many of our partners from industry have been banned from hospitals and offices to preclude direct advertising to providers and stop the potentially influential visits that once came with pens, meals and free samples. No matter where you stand on the spectrum of how we should handle representatives and whether they should even be allowed to see you, the fact is we have all been there.
Andrew J. Klein
For me, it was a knock at my barely open office door as I was hurrying to get a book chapter finished, patient charts documented and some other things crossed off the endless to-do list. The representative wanted to ask if he could come by with his boss the following day and find out when I would be available to talk to them for 5 minutes. He explained that he wanted his boss to meet “his interventionalists,” making me cringe, as last I checked, I wasn’t owned by anyone.
So what do you do? Escort him to the door saying you are not interested in talking to anyone? Say sure, you’d be happy to allot some time tomorrow? State that you are super-busy and will have to see how tomorrow goes?
As a son and brother of people in sales, I understand the business, the constant pressure to meet end-quarter goals and the potential for termination if you don’t meet expectations. Industry representatives have families to support and mouths to feed and as a result have found their way into this challenging business and now into our offices/hallways/cath labs. Handling these interactions can be very challenging. But at the same time, restrictions that preclude reps from entering your lab, office or hospital can also be problematic because device representatives can serve as great resources of knowledge and information.
Ultimately, in the end, I think there is a time and place for everything. Medical conferences offer ideal opportunities to network with industry reps and hear about the latest device and pharmacological advancements their companies have to offer. But in our practice, where we are focused on the responsibilities of our job and delivering the best possible patient care, these unscheduled visits more often than not feel like distractions that do little to foster relationships with industry.
For now, though, until doors are barricaded and bans enforced, all of us will have that “hello” from someone trying to sell us something. What do you do, and what do you say?