Pennsylvania doctors used to seeing a steady stream of drug company representatives touting their latest pharmaceuticals soon could see a different kind of rep at their doors.

State officials yesterday announced they will be sending their own consultants to advise doctors about the most effective medications to prescribe to patients served by state-sponsored drug programs.

The new initiative, called the Independent Drug Information Service, will send trained drug information consultants to physicians to share data on which medications work best. It would remain up to the doctors to decide whether to act upon the advice.

"We all know about the tremendous resources that the pharmaceutical industry devotes to having its representatives visit doctors' offices," Rosemarie Greco, director of the Governor's Office of Health Care Reform, said at a news conference at Mercy Hospital.

"Now, the state is using that same tactic, based on a desire to educate, not market, certain types of pharmaceuticals."

"We want to make sure doctors are hearing all the facts they need about the most clinically effective medications on the market today, not just drugs with the biggest advertising budgets," said Nora Dowd Eisenhower, the state's Secretary of Aging.

Nine consultants will focus initially on doctors who treat recipients of PACE, the state's drug assistance program for low-income people 65 and older, and PACENET, a similar program for people with higher incomes.

The effort will be expanded later to involve doctors who treat patients covered by Medicaid, state employee and retiree insurance plans, and other state-supported prescription programs.

The $3 million, three-year effort is being funded by the state's PACE program.

It will begin in 28 counties, including Allegheny, Beaver, Butler, Fayette, Greene, Lawrence, Mercer, Washington and Westmoreland. Eventually, it will be expanded statewide.

Dr. Jerry Avorn, a professor at the Harvard Medical School who is supervising the program, said it is often easy for doctors to get information "about the latest, fanciest, most expensive and perhaps least well-studied drug that's out there."

But getting more objective information is often difficult, he said.

The painkiller Vioxx, he said, is an example of a costly or heavily advertised drug that turned out not to be best for patients.

Last fall, the drug's maker, Merck, pulled it from the market after researchers indicated that it significantly increased the risk of heart attack and stroke for some patients. Since then, the company has faced a flood of lawsuits, and a Texas jury found the company negligent last month in a man's death and said his widow should receive $253.5 million in damages.

Officials emphasized that the program announced yesterday aims to improve care, not cut costs. But Tom Snedden, program director for PACE, said he expected the effort to result in savings and, in some cases, the prescribing of fewer medications.

Avorn said the program would build upon a recently completed program to improve the management of osteoporosis in Pennsylvania.

The scope of the effort announced yesterday is unusual among states, Snedden said. But other states, including West Virginia, have developed similar programs, and the approach has been used widely in Canada, Great Britain and Australia.