drugpusher

I would think a key piece of evidence would be the IMS reports which show doctor level prescription data. The companies had to know that there were a lot of outlier doctors prescribing huge amounts of opioids way above the norm. (For those that don't know, you can buy data which shows what individual doctors prescribe. All drug companies buy this to know their market share and plan salesforce activities. You better believe they knew when things were going off the rails.)

Hah. I've actually spent months of my life working with drug reps - including going with them on doctor's visits. They will get five minutes max to go through their spiel, and they are very focused on selling the specific uses or differences to get doctors to switch.

What is also amazing is that it is easy to get doctor level data on your drugs market share in their prescription patterns. So you can target very effectively. Then it's all discipline of frequency and hitting the right docs.

Why do you think so many drug reps are blonde girls? Because the doctors will make time to see 'em.

And what is doubly amazing is how effective this brute force sales technique is. I have graphs of visit frequency vs market share and it is DEADLY effective if you get it right. (Of course there are diminishing returns. Drug reps will game their visit stats by overvisiting friendly docs. So you can't​ give them credit for those visits.)

Source: I'm a healthcare sales management consultant