Pharmaceutical sales rep access reducing most among oncologists in USA

As more pharmaceutical companies prepare to bring new oncology drugs to market, their sales representatives face a rising hurdle – oncologists in the USA are reducing the number of times they will see them.

According to the spring 2012 AccessMonitor, a report from global sales and marketing consulting firm ZS Associates, about 61% of US oncologists placed moderate-to-severe restrictions on visits from pharmaceutical sales reps. This makes oncology the most restrictive of the 20 most common medical specialties measured in the report. By comparison, about 47% of cardiologists and only 38% of primary care physicians restrict rep access to the same degree.

Oncology is the fastest-growing specialty therapy area in the world and accounted for 10% of global pharmaceutical sales in 2011. Currently, there are about 1,000 oncology drugs in the pipeline - almost twice the number in any other field.