The Tennessean 9/11/2011
Older Tennesseans increasingly face hunger, AARP says
Therese Marrs has learned the art of stretching a link of smoked sausage, a jar of cheese and a box of macaroni into three meals every week.
The 56-year-old Smyrna mother struggles to make the meals come together for her husband and 16-year-old daughter each week, since she was laid off from her quality assurance job at a factory in February. She spends almost every day looking for jobs, but she fears the worst once her unemployment benefits run out in a few months.
“I’ve learned how to cut my meals. My food stamps only stretch about three weeks, so the food bank helps,” Marrs said. “I’ve been working in factories since I was 15, but I can’t seem to get anybody to hire me.”
Marrs is among the 1 in 6 Tennesseans and 15.6 million older adults who face the threat of hunger as a result of a lingering weak economy in America, according to a recently released AARP report, “Food Insecurity Among Older Adults.” The study, conducted by the University of Kentucky and the University of Illinois, showed that between 2007 and 2009, there was a 63 percent increase in food insecurity among 40- to 49-year-olds and a 37 percent increase for those between the ages of 50 and 59.
Baby boomers seem to be at the greatest risk for hunger because many do not receive benefits such as Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, which is offered to adults with children, or Social Security, typically available to those 62 and older, said AARP Tennessee spokeswoman Karin Miller. Tennessee ranks ninth in the country for food insecurity among 40- to 49-year-olds.
“People are losing their jobs, and it particularly hits the older worker harder,” Miller said. “There are few government programs set up for them, but our goal is to let them know of the benefits they do have. More people are in need of food, but there are less donations and less assistance. Nobody should go hungry because of that.”
Stigma is barrier
Besides the lack of employment, older adults also are misinformed about benefits that could assist them with their nutrition needs, said Casey Woodling, Community Food Advocates food stamp outreach coordinator. More than 1 million Tennesseans receive benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps, but thousands more qualify, he said. His agency, which advocates healthy and affordable food, receives 200 calls a month from individuals in need of food stamps. Still, only a third of seniors eligible for food stamps are receiving them.
“There’s the stigma with receiving food stamps, but there’s also the barriers of knowing how the program works, mobility and technology,” Woodling said. “I get a lot of calls from people in that age group, and they’re struggling to get food on the table and paying for health care.”
Cathy Adams faces that particular perfect storm as she attempts to care for her husband, Mike. He suffers from rheumatoid arthritis, but does not receive disability benefits. The 47-year-old Madison woman was fired from her waitress job in December, but she expected to snag a job quickly after working in food service for 30 years. The lack of prospects, her husband’s health condition and the fact that she is now forced to live with a friend have led to depression, Adams said. She decided to sign up for SNAP earlier this month.
“We raised two kids. My husband was a roofer, and I worked two jobs,” Adams said. “We were never rich, but we were able to own a home and be OK. I laugh to keep from crying a lot of times, because I can’t figure out why I can’t find a job.”
Help is diminishing
SNAP has created a safety net for older adults suffering in the economic downturn, but those benefits will decrease by 2013, Woodling said. The stimulus program funded a13 percent increase in benefits in 2009, but the increase will be eliminated a year earlier than planned to make up for federal budget shortfalls.
Other programs such as Meals on Wheels and funding for food banks also face challenges. Barbara Hale, director of the Smyrna-La Vergne Food Bank, said her food bank depended on an annual $15,000 Emergency Food and Shelter grant for several years, but those federal funds were cut from the budget this year. The United Way and the Rutherford County community fund the food bank, which sees more than 450 people every month. Demand for food boxes is growing for residents in their 40s and 50s, but many residents are unaware of the food woes, she said.
“We’re having to go cheaper, and we’re giving out less food than we used to,” Hale said. “The cost of food keeps going up, but the funding is down. There’s so many people that go to work and church every week but don’t know this need is there. They just don’t see it.”
Since September is National Hunger Action Month, AARP hopes to open the eyes of those Americans to the fact that older adults have a growing urgency for sustenance, Miller said. The organization is holding donation drives at food banks across the country through its Drive to End Hunger program. AARP has also partnered with Walgreens to offer information about SNAP at the retailer’s 300 stores. Future cuts to state and federal budgets will make a community effort to end hunger a must, she said.
“We can’t count on the government because we know those budgets and numbers for feeding programs are not stable,” Miller said. “It’s so important that we help our own neighbors. One dollar at a food bank can turn into three to five meals.”
For Marrs and her family, the tide may be turning. Her husband, James, recently landed a job. Her daughter Glorie has managed to keep A’s and B’s in spite of the family’s hardship.
“I used to clean houses for a living,’’ Therese Marrs said. “I’ll go back to that if I am able to, but maybe something else will come up.’’
Contact Stephanie Tooneat 615-259-8079 or stoone@tennessean.com
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Education, shopping to mix at Hickory Hollow mall
The Nashville Ledger
By Joe MorrisPrint
It’s been written off, even making its way onto a website chronicling dying shopping centers. But Hickory Hollow Mall isn’t finished yet.
An exodus of anchor tenants and smaller retailers in the last decade, coupled with negative coverage due to alleged gang activity on and around the premises, spooked shoppers and led to empty parking spaces.
In the last 12 months, however, the facility’s fortunes have taken a decided turn for the better, albeit in a bumpy fashion. After a few stops and starts, Metro Nashville is moving into the site in a big way, and Nashville State Community College is heading a multi-pronged educational component for other portions of the mall.
The increasingly sunny picture for Hickory Hollow is a sign that, if properly managed and marketed, even a foundering property can find new life, says Bob McCalla, managing partner at Cumberland Commercial Partners.
“The mall had become economically obsolete, just from the competition that it didn’t have back when it opened,” McCalla said. “The power centers to the south and east of it have drawn away business and, because of the way it’s built, there aren’t a lot of ways to split it up. They needed someone who required a large floor space, and they’ve gotten that with these two deals.”
The parking, and the location near major thoroughfares and the interstate work to the mall’s advantage like they always have, McCalla adds.
“I can’t think of any city that doesn’t have a mall like this, one that’s failing for economic reasons,” he says. “It’s the nature of the beast right now. But if you can get the right mix of tenants, or lease and sell the larger buildings, then you can still be viable. The malls in Green Hills and Cool Springs haven’t faced this problem, but Hickory Hollow has and it may have found a way to still be successful.”
The arrival of Metro has been particularly roundabout and, if nothing else, a study in perseverance.
About a year ago, Mayor Karl Dean announced an $18 million plan to put a library and archives, public health and community centers and even a park on the site. The plan also called for an expo-type center to house the flea market and other ongoing events that would be homeless due to Dean’s simultaneously announced decision to shut down the Tennessee State Fairgrounds.
Some aspects of the plan, such as relocating the flea market to Antioch, got a negative reception. For its part, Metro only conceded that the high rent for the former Dillard’s building made the plan unworkable for the flea market.
Earlier this year, vocal foes of moving the Metro Archives out of Green Hills won their battle as well. Once again, cost was cited as the deal breaker, this time to lease the former JCPenney building.
But by late spring, Metro had moved from leasing failures to buying success.
A $3.25 million offer was made for the JC Penney building and its 12.31-acre site, enough room for a library, community center and small park. Negotiations are moving ahead, and the city is moving ahead with its plans for the property, the mayor says.
“Southeast Davidson County is one of the fastest-growing areas in Nashville, and I am working to make sure that the facilities and services there keep pace with the needs of its residents,” Dean explains.
“Vanderbilt’s work with One Hundred Oaks is an example of an innovative new use for an underutilized suburban mall. I believe the project at Hickory Hollow can be another model for grouping community services in a way that both serves residents and benefits surrounding retail and commercial areas.”
Meanwhile, the state has agreed to pay $3 million the Dillard’s building for Nashville State Community College, giving the school a satellite campus to its White Bridge Road location. If that deal goes through, it could join an alternative high school and a charter school on the site.
If all these plans take place, the area between Macy’s and Sears would house non-retail facilities while the larger, former stores at each end will house Metro and NSCC. It’s a mix that Angie Carter, Hickory Hollow’s general manager, thinks will work out well for all parties involved.
“Malls change and evolve,” Carter says. “Look at how this mall has changed over the years. We are excited to see what the property will become. It’s always been a great facility, and to have people reuse this space in new and exciting ways presents some welcome challenges to us as well.”
The foot traffic will be somewhat different in that not every visitor to the property will be there to shop, but there’ll still be enough people who will need to pick up various items, not to mention eat and drink, to keep the connecting retail corridors jumping, she predicted.
“People will come here to eat, shop and work,” Carter says. “This is the latest way in which we have remade ourselves. This mall has come a long way from Hot Dog on a Stick, and we’re going to guarantee the new tenants and owners a safe, secure and comfortable place for their students, employees and guests to visit.”
Nashville State sees its new property as a multi-part win. First, it’s big enough to house existing programs and have room for expansion. Second, as an empty shell there’s not a lot of teardown costs. And third, the mall comes with plenty of parking space. Add location, an area from which NSCC already draws heavily, and it’s a bit surprising the school didn’t snap up the property before now, says Dick Tracy, executive director of the Tennessee Board of Regents’ Office of Facilities Development, which is handling the transaction.
“A big part of our students come from the 37013 ZIP code, and so when we began looking at a new campus that was the area we focused on,” Tracy says.
“But we needed at least 40,000 square feet, and there was nothing. It was either warehouse space with no parking, or a spot with parking but not near enough room. And then we looked at leasing. We talked with CBL a few years ago about the Penney’s and Dillard’s buildings, but that didn’t work out for a variety of reasons.”
If all goes well, renovations will begin in the coming months and classes will start in the fall of 2012. The college’s main campus holds around 14,000 students, and it’s expected to have anywhere from 4,000 to 5,000 at the new site.
“We’re just going through the process,” Tracy said. “We’re taking the building and the seven acres it sits on, which gives us access to the public street as well as all the parking. CBL will manage the overall property, and we will maintain our own facility.
“We relieve pressure on our main campus and pick up more students, and the mall gets a lot more traffic,” he said. “Not everyone who goes to the mall will take a class, but a lot of people who take classes will go to the mall. It was affordable land; it had good parking and was accessible. Now we’re going to talk to the city to see what we can do with the facility that they’re going to be putting in, so that we’re all working on this large property together.”
The increasingly sunny picture for Hickory Hollow is a sign that, if properly managed and marketed, even a foundering property can find new life, says Bob McCalla, managing partner at Cumberland Commercial Partners.
“The mall had become economically obsolete, just from the competition that it didn’t have back when it opened,” McCalla said. “The power centers to the south and east of it have drawn away business and, because of the way it’s built, there aren’t a lot of ways to split it up. They needed someone who required a large floor space, and they’ve gotten that with these two deals.”
The parking, and the location near major thoroughfares and the interstate worked to the mall’s advantage like they always have, McCalla adds.
“I can’t think of any city that doesn’t have a mall like this, one that’s failing for economic reasons,” he says. “It’s the nature of the beast right now. But if you can get the right mix of tenants, or lease and sell the larger buildings, then you can still be viable. The malls in Green Hills and Cool Springs haven’t faced this problem, but Hickory Hollow has and it may have found a way to still be successful.”
By Joe MorrisPrint
It’s been written off, even making its way onto a website chronicling dying shopping centers. But Hickory Hollow Mall isn’t finished yet.
An exodus of anchor tenants and smaller retailers in the last decade, coupled with negative coverage due to alleged gang activity on and around the premises, spooked shoppers and led to empty parking spaces.
In the last 12 months, however, the facility’s fortunes have taken a decided turn for the better, albeit in a bumpy fashion. After a few stops and starts, Metro Nashville is moving into the site in a big way, and Nashville State Community College is heading a multi-pronged educational component for other portions of the mall.
The increasingly sunny picture for Hickory Hollow is a sign that, if properly managed and marketed, even a foundering property can find new life, says Bob McCalla, managing partner at Cumberland Commercial Partners.
“The mall had become economically obsolete, just from the competition that it didn’t have back when it opened,” McCalla said. “The power centers to the south and east of it have drawn away business and, because of the way it’s built, there aren’t a lot of ways to split it up. They needed someone who required a large floor space, and they’ve gotten that with these two deals.”
The parking, and the location near major thoroughfares and the interstate work to the mall’s advantage like they always have, McCalla adds.
“I can’t think of any city that doesn’t have a mall like this, one that’s failing for economic reasons,” he says. “It’s the nature of the beast right now. But if you can get the right mix of tenants, or lease and sell the larger buildings, then you can still be viable. The malls in Green Hills and Cool Springs haven’t faced this problem, but Hickory Hollow has and it may have found a way to still be successful.”
The arrival of Metro has been particularly roundabout and, if nothing else, a study in perseverance.
About a year ago, Mayor Karl Dean announced an $18 million plan to put a library and archives, public health and community centers and even a park on the site. The plan also called for an expo-type center to house the flea market and other ongoing events that would be homeless due to Dean’s simultaneously announced decision to shut down the Tennessee State Fairgrounds.
Some aspects of the plan, such as relocating the flea market to Antioch, got a negative reception. For its part, Metro only conceded that the high rent for the former Dillard’s building made the plan unworkable for the flea market.
Earlier this year, vocal foes of moving the Metro Archives out of Green Hills won their battle as well. Once again, cost was cited as the deal breaker, this time to lease the former JCPenney building.
But by late spring, Metro had moved from leasing failures to buying success.
A $3.25 million offer was made for the JC Penney building and its 12.31-acre site, enough room for a library, community center and small park. Negotiations are moving ahead, and the city is moving ahead with its plans for the property, the mayor says.
“Southeast Davidson County is one of the fastest-growing areas in Nashville, and I am working to make sure that the facilities and services there keep pace with the needs of its residents,” Dean explains.
“Vanderbilt’s work with One Hundred Oaks is an example of an innovative new use for an underutilized suburban mall. I believe the project at Hickory Hollow can be another model for grouping community services in a way that both serves residents and benefits surrounding retail and commercial areas.”
Meanwhile, the state has agreed to pay $3 million the Dillard’s building for Nashville State Community College, giving the school a satellite campus to its White Bridge Road location. If that deal goes through, it could join an alternative high school and a charter school on the site.
If all these plans take place, the area between Macy’s and Sears would house non-retail facilities while the larger, former stores at each end will house Metro and NSCC. It’s a mix that Angie Carter, Hickory Hollow’s general manager, thinks will work out well for all parties involved.
“Malls change and evolve,” Carter says. “Look at how this mall has changed over the years. We are excited to see what the property will become. It’s always been a great facility, and to have people reuse this space in new and exciting ways presents some welcome challenges to us as well.”
The foot traffic will be somewhat different in that not every visitor to the property will be there to shop, but there’ll still be enough people who will need to pick up various items, not to mention eat and drink, to keep the connecting retail corridors jumping, she predicted.
“People will come here to eat, shop and work,” Carter says. “This is the latest way in which we have remade ourselves. This mall has come a long way from Hot Dog on a Stick, and we’re going to guarantee the new tenants and owners a safe, secure and comfortable place for their students, employees and guests to visit.”
Nashville State sees its new property as a multi-part win. First, it’s big enough to house existing programs and have room for expansion. Second, as an empty shell there’s not a lot of teardown costs. And third, the mall comes with plenty of parking space. Add location, an area from which NSCC already draws heavily, and it’s a bit surprising the school didn’t snap up the property before now, says Dick Tracy, executive director of the Tennessee Board of Regents’ Office of Facilities Development, which is handling the transaction.
“A big part of our students come from the 37013 ZIP code, and so when we began looking at a new campus that was the area we focused on,” Tracy says.
“But we needed at least 40,000 square feet, and there was nothing. It was either warehouse space with no parking, or a spot with parking but not near enough room. And then we looked at leasing. We talked with CBL a few years ago about the Penney’s and Dillard’s buildings, but that didn’t work out for a variety of reasons.”
If all goes well, renovations will begin in the coming months and classes will start in the fall of 2012. The college’s main campus holds around 14,000 students, and it’s expected to have anywhere from 4,000 to 5,000 at the new site.
“We’re just going through the process,” Tracy said. “We’re taking the building and the seven acres it sits on, which gives us access to the public street as well as all the parking. CBL will manage the overall property, and we will maintain our own facility.
“We relieve pressure on our main campus and pick up more students, and the mall gets a lot more traffic,” he said. “Not everyone who goes to the mall will take a class, but a lot of people who take classes will go to the mall. It was affordable land; it had good parking and was accessible. Now we’re going to talk to the city to see what we can do with the facility that they’re going to be putting in, so that we’re all working on this large property together.”
The increasingly sunny picture for Hickory Hollow is a sign that, if properly managed and marketed, even a foundering property can find new life, says Bob McCalla, managing partner at Cumberland Commercial Partners.
“The mall had become economically obsolete, just from the competition that it didn’t have back when it opened,” McCalla said. “The power centers to the south and east of it have drawn away business and, because of the way it’s built, there aren’t a lot of ways to split it up. They needed someone who required a large floor space, and they’ve gotten that with these two deals.”
The parking, and the location near major thoroughfares and the interstate worked to the mall’s advantage like they always have, McCalla adds.
“I can’t think of any city that doesn’t have a mall like this, one that’s failing for economic reasons,” he says. “It’s the nature of the beast right now. But if you can get the right mix of tenants, or lease and sell the larger buildings, then you can still be viable. The malls in Green Hills and Cool Springs haven’t faced this problem, but Hickory Hollow has and it may have found a way to still be successful.”
Friday, September 9, 2011
THHAP Meeting (The Hickory Hollow Action Partnership)
September 13, 2011 at Freeland Chevy at 8:30 A.M.
Please attend this meeting to find out what is new in “your” neighborhood.
Please forward this invitation on to anyone that is interested in what is going on in the Hickory Hollow area.
THHAP is an organization that was formed to enhance the Hickory Hollow Business District through the combined efforts of business leaders and area residents. In conjunction with community organizations support from the Metro Nashville Police Department, the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce’s Chamber South Area Advisory Council, among others. THHAP will play a major role in everything from business recruitment and crime mitigation to beautification and community spirit efforts. The goal is to renew the focus on the area that will lead the rebirth of Hickory Hollow as a new business hub in Middle Tennessee.
Please attend this meeting to find out what is new in “your” neighborhood.
Please forward this invitation on to anyone that is interested in what is going on in the Hickory Hollow area.
THHAP is an organization that was formed to enhance the Hickory Hollow Business District through the combined efforts of business leaders and area residents. In conjunction with community organizations support from the Metro Nashville Police Department, the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce’s Chamber South Area Advisory Council, among others. THHAP will play a major role in everything from business recruitment and crime mitigation to beautification and community spirit efforts. The goal is to renew the focus on the area that will lead the rebirth of Hickory Hollow as a new business hub in Middle Tennessee.
www.THHAP.org Call Carol 731-300 x 0 or Judi 731-9911 if you have questions.
Thursday, September 8, 2011
Doctors rake in to push pills for drug companies
The Tennessean
8 drug companies paid $220M to physician marketers last year
Eight pharmaceutical companies, including the nation’s three largest, doled out more than $220 million last year to promotional speakers for their products, according to a ProPublica analysis of company data.
For the first time, all of these companies have reported a full year of payments, allowing for head-to-head comparisons of how much they spent on physicians to help push their pills. Some appear to be paring back.
Firms with the highest U.S. sales last year didn’t spend the most on physician marketers. Industry leader Pfizer, with sales of $26.2 billion, spent $34.4 million on speakers, ranking third among the eight companies. By comparison, Eli Lilly and Co. spent the most on speakers, $61.5 million, even though its sales were about half of Pfizer’s.
“We continue to believe in the benefits and value that educational programs led by physicians provide to patient care,” Lilly spokesman J. Scott MacGregor said in an email.
The data provide a preview of what the public can expect to see in 2013, when all drug and medical-device companies — potentially hundreds — must report such figures to the federal government.
Until 2009, pharmaceutical company payments to health professionals were closely held trade secrets. But several companies began reporting the information publicly under pressure from lawmakers or as a condition of settling federal whistle-blower lawsuits.
In October, ProPublica published a database called Dollars for Docs that included information from those companies. It allows the public to search for individual physicians to see whether they’ve been on pharma’s payroll.
Today, ProPublica is updating that tool to include payments made to health professionals by 12 companies. Eight of those published data for all of 2010: Lilly, GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, Merck, Cephalon, Johnson & Johnson, ViiV Healthcare and AstraZeneca.
In addition to the payments made to speakers, some of the companies also disclosed how much they’ve spent on consulting, travel, meals and research.
In all, payments to doctors and other health-care providers in ProPublica’s database total more than $760 million and cover reports from drug companies between 2009 and the second quarter of 2011.
Some docs pull out
The new data offer a glimpse of how the firms have adapted their strategies over time, both to changes in the marketplace and to increased scrutiny of their sales techniques.
Many experts predict physicians will back away from working for the companies once their names and pay are publicly revealed.
It’s too early to know if this is true, but ProPublica’s analysis shows that the payouts to dozens of doctors and other health professionals took a steep dive last year.
Pulmonologist Veena Antony, for example, was paid at least $88,000 to give promotional talks for GlaxoSmithKline in 2009. But last year, the Birmingham, Ala., doctor gave them up out of concern that patients might think her advice was tainted.
“You don’t even want the appearance that I might be influenced by anything that a company gave,” she said.
Cancer specialist Nam Dang was a regular on Cephalon’s speaking circuit, pulling in $131,250 in 2009. But those promotional gigs stopped, he said, after he took a job at the University of Florida in Gainesville, which bans such talks. In 2010, he received $10,000 consulting for Cephalon and Pfizer.
Nurse practitioner Terri Warren, who runs a Portland, Ore., health clinic, earned at least $113,000 from Glaxo in 2009, mostly talking about its herpes drug Valtrex. In 2010, that dropped to $300 after the drug went off patent and Glaxo no longer had a financial incentive to promote it.
“It’s a business decision, clearly,” said Warren, who felt her talks helped educate other health professionals about treating a taboo illness. “My money (from Glaxo) went into keeping this little clinic alive, and now we have to figure out some other way to do that.”
Another group of physicians has ramped up speaking engagements and consulting.
Buffalo hematologist Zale Bernstein earned $49,250 from Cephalon in 2009. The following year, his pay jumped to $177,800 (plus an additional $35,500 for travel). Bernstein did not return calls for comment.
Pain specialist Gerald M. Sacks spoke and consulted for four companies in the database and was among the highest paid. The Santa Monica, Calif., doctor earned $270,825 from Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Lilly and Cephalon in 2010, up from $225,575 in 2009. Those figures do not include travel costs and meals.
Over 18 months, Pfizer alone paid Sacks $318,250 for speaking. He did not return repeated calls for comment.
Pfizer’s new disclosure also revealed an unusual recipient. Its top-paid physician consultant last year, Dr. Christiana Goh Bardon, runs a hedge fund in Boston that bets on the rise and fall of health-care companies. She was paid nearly $308,000 to “provide input on our BioTher-apeutics business development plan,” Pfizer spokeswoman Kristen Neese wrote in an email.
Bardon, who started her hedge fund after her Pfizer contract ended, was required to sign a confidentiality agreement and not allowed to invest in Pfizer or any of the biotech companies that Pfizer was looking at acquiring or partnering with for projects, Neese said.
Bardon said in a voice-mail message that she does not currently practice as a physician and her work was based on her business acumen.
Drug companies change strategies
Some companies apparently have used fewer physician speakers and consultants since they began posting their data publicly.
Cephalon, a relatively small Pennsylvania company that specializes in pain, cancer and central nervous system drugs, paid physicians nearly $9.3 million in 2009 for speaking and consulting. That figure dropped to $5 million last year.
“There wasn’t one big thing that happened that shifted the focus,” said spokeswoman Jenifer Antonacci. Rather, the company’s marketing strategies for its brands changed.
AstraZeneca cut its spending on speakers from roughly $22.8 million in the first half of 2010 to about $9.2 million in the second half.
The company’s U.S. compliance officer, Marie Martino, said AstraZeneca typically holds most of its speaker events in the beginning of each year. But she acknowledged that the company’s spending on promotional talks has been decreasing.
“We’re in a period now where we don’t have a lot of new indications (approved uses) or new products that have been introduced in recent months, and that really is the fundamental explanation for what you’re seeing,” Martino said.
AstraZeneca, like other companies, is also replacing some in-person speaking events with teleconferences, webcasts and video conferences.
Glaxo’s spending on speakers also slowed in 2010, averaging about $13.2 million per quarter in 2010, down 15 percent from the last three quarters of 2009. (Glaxo did not report data in the first quarter of 2009.)
Company spokeswoman Mary Anne Rhyne said the company is working to reduce its speaker rolls by 50 percent. “We feel it is a better use of resources to use fewer speakers more often. This cuts down on training costs as well as lessens the number of contracts needed,” she wrote in an email.
And Lilly’s speaker payments dropped 10 percent from 2009 to 2010, which spokesman MacGregor said was likely due to “normal year-to-year fluctuation.”
ProPublica’s early analysis of the data is limited because so few companies report their spending and even then, disclose different information. Lilly, for example, reports every health professional it pays to speak, while Pfizer includes only those who can prescribe.
“It’s really unclear how much money is being spent in any one of these areas,” said Vincent DeChellis, a principal at NHHS Healthcare Consulting, which has studied the data. “As you get more and more companies participating and submitting this information, you’re going to get an initial look” at what may be a multibillion-dollar practice.
When Massachusetts required drug and device companies to report payments to doctors in that state last year, 286 companies did so.
Scrutiny of speaker programs has prompted changes.
After ProPublica reported last year that some drug-company speakers had been sanctioned by their state medical boards, the firms pledged to toughen their screening procedures and exclude physicians with disciplinary records.
Separately, ProPublica found that universities were not enforcing their own policies barring physicians from giving promotional speeches. In response, a number of schools said they would begin using the payment rosters to check for rule-breakers.
Pharma’s trade group said the focus of most companies right now is ensuring the accuracy of data that will be publicly released in 2013. But this transparency also must be put into context for patients, said Diane Bieri, executive vice president and general counsel for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.
Doctors help develop new medicines, advise companies on marketing and help educate their peers about appropriate uses of new drugs, she said.
“If the only information that’s available is that company A paid doctor B $75,000 for a consulting arrangement,” she said, “that’s typically not enough information to really educate the patient about what was involved in that relationship.”
To learn more on this topic click the link HERE
8 drug companies paid $220M to physician marketers last year
Eight pharmaceutical companies, including the nation’s three largest, doled out more than $220 million last year to promotional speakers for their products, according to a ProPublica analysis of company data.
For the first time, all of these companies have reported a full year of payments, allowing for head-to-head comparisons of how much they spent on physicians to help push their pills. Some appear to be paring back.
Firms with the highest U.S. sales last year didn’t spend the most on physician marketers. Industry leader Pfizer, with sales of $26.2 billion, spent $34.4 million on speakers, ranking third among the eight companies. By comparison, Eli Lilly and Co. spent the most on speakers, $61.5 million, even though its sales were about half of Pfizer’s.
“We continue to believe in the benefits and value that educational programs led by physicians provide to patient care,” Lilly spokesman J. Scott MacGregor said in an email.
The data provide a preview of what the public can expect to see in 2013, when all drug and medical-device companies — potentially hundreds — must report such figures to the federal government.
Until 2009, pharmaceutical company payments to health professionals were closely held trade secrets. But several companies began reporting the information publicly under pressure from lawmakers or as a condition of settling federal whistle-blower lawsuits.
In October, ProPublica published a database called Dollars for Docs that included information from those companies. It allows the public to search for individual physicians to see whether they’ve been on pharma’s payroll.
Today, ProPublica is updating that tool to include payments made to health professionals by 12 companies. Eight of those published data for all of 2010: Lilly, GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, Merck, Cephalon, Johnson & Johnson, ViiV Healthcare and AstraZeneca.
In addition to the payments made to speakers, some of the companies also disclosed how much they’ve spent on consulting, travel, meals and research.
In all, payments to doctors and other health-care providers in ProPublica’s database total more than $760 million and cover reports from drug companies between 2009 and the second quarter of 2011.
Some docs pull out
The new data offer a glimpse of how the firms have adapted their strategies over time, both to changes in the marketplace and to increased scrutiny of their sales techniques.
Many experts predict physicians will back away from working for the companies once their names and pay are publicly revealed.
It’s too early to know if this is true, but ProPublica’s analysis shows that the payouts to dozens of doctors and other health professionals took a steep dive last year.
Pulmonologist Veena Antony, for example, was paid at least $88,000 to give promotional talks for GlaxoSmithKline in 2009. But last year, the Birmingham, Ala., doctor gave them up out of concern that patients might think her advice was tainted.
“You don’t even want the appearance that I might be influenced by anything that a company gave,” she said.
Cancer specialist Nam Dang was a regular on Cephalon’s speaking circuit, pulling in $131,250 in 2009. But those promotional gigs stopped, he said, after he took a job at the University of Florida in Gainesville, which bans such talks. In 2010, he received $10,000 consulting for Cephalon and Pfizer.
Nurse practitioner Terri Warren, who runs a Portland, Ore., health clinic, earned at least $113,000 from Glaxo in 2009, mostly talking about its herpes drug Valtrex. In 2010, that dropped to $300 after the drug went off patent and Glaxo no longer had a financial incentive to promote it.
“It’s a business decision, clearly,” said Warren, who felt her talks helped educate other health professionals about treating a taboo illness. “My money (from Glaxo) went into keeping this little clinic alive, and now we have to figure out some other way to do that.”
Another group of physicians has ramped up speaking engagements and consulting.
Buffalo hematologist Zale Bernstein earned $49,250 from Cephalon in 2009. The following year, his pay jumped to $177,800 (plus an additional $35,500 for travel). Bernstein did not return calls for comment.
Pain specialist Gerald M. Sacks spoke and consulted for four companies in the database and was among the highest paid. The Santa Monica, Calif., doctor earned $270,825 from Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Lilly and Cephalon in 2010, up from $225,575 in 2009. Those figures do not include travel costs and meals.
Over 18 months, Pfizer alone paid Sacks $318,250 for speaking. He did not return repeated calls for comment.
Pfizer’s new disclosure also revealed an unusual recipient. Its top-paid physician consultant last year, Dr. Christiana Goh Bardon, runs a hedge fund in Boston that bets on the rise and fall of health-care companies. She was paid nearly $308,000 to “provide input on our BioTher-apeutics business development plan,” Pfizer spokeswoman Kristen Neese wrote in an email.
Bardon, who started her hedge fund after her Pfizer contract ended, was required to sign a confidentiality agreement and not allowed to invest in Pfizer or any of the biotech companies that Pfizer was looking at acquiring or partnering with for projects, Neese said.
Bardon said in a voice-mail message that she does not currently practice as a physician and her work was based on her business acumen.
Drug companies change strategies
Some companies apparently have used fewer physician speakers and consultants since they began posting their data publicly.
Cephalon, a relatively small Pennsylvania company that specializes in pain, cancer and central nervous system drugs, paid physicians nearly $9.3 million in 2009 for speaking and consulting. That figure dropped to $5 million last year.
“There wasn’t one big thing that happened that shifted the focus,” said spokeswoman Jenifer Antonacci. Rather, the company’s marketing strategies for its brands changed.
AstraZeneca cut its spending on speakers from roughly $22.8 million in the first half of 2010 to about $9.2 million in the second half.
The company’s U.S. compliance officer, Marie Martino, said AstraZeneca typically holds most of its speaker events in the beginning of each year. But she acknowledged that the company’s spending on promotional talks has been decreasing.
“We’re in a period now where we don’t have a lot of new indications (approved uses) or new products that have been introduced in recent months, and that really is the fundamental explanation for what you’re seeing,” Martino said.
AstraZeneca, like other companies, is also replacing some in-person speaking events with teleconferences, webcasts and video conferences.
Glaxo’s spending on speakers also slowed in 2010, averaging about $13.2 million per quarter in 2010, down 15 percent from the last three quarters of 2009. (Glaxo did not report data in the first quarter of 2009.)
Company spokeswoman Mary Anne Rhyne said the company is working to reduce its speaker rolls by 50 percent. “We feel it is a better use of resources to use fewer speakers more often. This cuts down on training costs as well as lessens the number of contracts needed,” she wrote in an email.
And Lilly’s speaker payments dropped 10 percent from 2009 to 2010, which spokesman MacGregor said was likely due to “normal year-to-year fluctuation.”
ProPublica’s early analysis of the data is limited because so few companies report their spending and even then, disclose different information. Lilly, for example, reports every health professional it pays to speak, while Pfizer includes only those who can prescribe.
“It’s really unclear how much money is being spent in any one of these areas,” said Vincent DeChellis, a principal at NHHS Healthcare Consulting, which has studied the data. “As you get more and more companies participating and submitting this information, you’re going to get an initial look” at what may be a multibillion-dollar practice.
When Massachusetts required drug and device companies to report payments to doctors in that state last year, 286 companies did so.
Scrutiny of speaker programs has prompted changes.
After ProPublica reported last year that some drug-company speakers had been sanctioned by their state medical boards, the firms pledged to toughen their screening procedures and exclude physicians with disciplinary records.
Separately, ProPublica found that universities were not enforcing their own policies barring physicians from giving promotional speeches. In response, a number of schools said they would begin using the payment rosters to check for rule-breakers.
Pharma’s trade group said the focus of most companies right now is ensuring the accuracy of data that will be publicly released in 2013. But this transparency also must be put into context for patients, said Diane Bieri, executive vice president and general counsel for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.
Doctors help develop new medicines, advise companies on marketing and help educate their peers about appropriate uses of new drugs, she said.
“If the only information that’s available is that company A paid doctor B $75,000 for a consulting arrangement,” she said, “that’s typically not enough information to really educate the patient about what was involved in that relationship.”
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Police: 2 men jump out of car, rob man walking home
News Channel 2 WKRN
Posted: Sep 08, 2011 7:32 AM CDT
NASHVILLE, Tenn. – A man was robbed as he walked home from work early Thursday morning in south Nashville.
The victim was walking home around 1 a.m. along Welch Road, near the intersection of Nolensville Pike and Harding Place.
Detectives said after a car approached the victim, two men armed with a gun and knife, jumped out of the car and stole the man's money.
The victim was not hurt.
Police are looking for a silver 2007 or 2008 Nissan Maxima with a temporary tag.
The car had a Tennessee Titans decal on the passenger side, rear window.
Anyone with information is urged to call Crime Stoppers at 74-CRIME.
Posted: Sep 08, 2011 7:32 AM CDT
NASHVILLE, Tenn. – A man was robbed as he walked home from work early Thursday morning in south Nashville.
The victim was walking home around 1 a.m. along Welch Road, near the intersection of Nolensville Pike and Harding Place.
Detectives said after a car approached the victim, two men armed with a gun and knife, jumped out of the car and stole the man's money.
The victim was not hurt.
Police are looking for a silver 2007 or 2008 Nissan Maxima with a temporary tag.
The car had a Tennessee Titans decal on the passenger side, rear window.
Anyone with information is urged to call Crime Stoppers at 74-CRIME.
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