I sure hope so.  Because the ability of pharmaceuticals to find out how often doctors prescribe which medications allows those pharmaceuticals to engage in all sorts of shenanigans, like finding doctors open to ghostwriting and pushing for off-label prescription use.

Washington Bureau – When your doctors writes you a prescription, that’s just between you, your doctor, and maybe your health insurance company–right?
Wrong. As things stand now, the pharmaceutical companies that make those prescription drugs are also looking over the doctor’s shoulder, keeping track of how many prescriptions for whose drugs the individual physician is writing.

And that data on the prescribing habits of thousands of doctors has become a powerful sales and marketing tool for the pharmaceutical industry, but also a source of growing concern among some elected officials, healthcare advocates and legal authorities.

Source: States, Consumer Advocates Challenge Rx Data Mining — baltimoresun.com