VA Borrows Tactic from Drug Reps

(Winter 2017) The Veterans Affairs (VA) department is trying a new method to fight the opioid epidemic by employing an additional 285 pharmacists. Their mission is to visit VA doctors’ offices and point out situations in which alternatives to opioids could be used. The VA is borrowing this effective one-to-one approach, known as “academic detailing,” from the pharmaceutical industry. Drugmakers for decades have used this tactic to promote doctors’ prescription of their drugs — which is suggested to have fueled the opioid problem.

The VA emphasized that its new approach isn’t solely about the removal of opioids from a patient’s regimen but also about prescribing a different remedy from the very beginning of treatment. Over the past three years, its new program assisted in lowering the number of opioid prescriptions written at VA sites in Kentucky and Tennessee by over 30%; the VA has placed the specialized pharmacists in every site it runs in these two states.

Tennessee officials believe this type of anti-opioid academic detailing could play an important role in reducing the prevalence of opioids throughout the state.

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