No more Alton Towers? UK pharma downsizes its hospitality
pharmafile | July 6, 2005 | News story | Sales and Marketing |
UK-based pharmaceutical companies have pre-empted strict new European rules on entertaining healthcare professionals by imposing their own restrictions.
The companies are distancing themselves from persistent allegations of providing lavish junkets for doctors, but still want to maintain close contact with key opinion leaders.
AstraZeneca, for one, has imposed new guidelines on hospitality, prohibiting holding UK meetings in four and five star hotels. In May this year the company sounded the death knell on entertaining doctors at luxury venues.
"The days of holding meetings at Gleneagles and the Grosvenor are long gone," one company insider said.
Pfizer has carried out a review of its relations with healthcare professionals while GlaxoSmithKline said it is a leader in ethical standards, and regularly reviews its internal code, first launched in 2003.
The moves come just ahead of a tighter new code of conduct from European trade body EFPIA, to be introduced across the continent this year, imposing strict limits on pharma companies' promotional activities.
Companies will not be allowed to organise or sponsor events that take place outside their home country and, according to one industry expert, it will also spell the end of stand-alone all-UK meetings overseas.
"The end may also be nigh for meetings at Alton Towers or other similar venues, as the code says that companies should avoid using venues that are renowned for their entertainment facilities," she said.
A spokesman for the ABPI confirmed that this was a legitimate reading of the new rules, but declined to discuss the new code in any further detail.
Pharma companies, according to the rules, will only be permitted to sponsor doctors' trips abroad if the visit can be logistically justified, like a visit to a state-of-the-art research facility.
Alternatively, trips can be held overseas if most of the attendees are from outside the home country, like a UK pharma company holding a meeting in Europe with only a minority of UK attendees.
The Brussels-based organisation has introduced a number of other rules on promotional activities. Key rules in the code of practice are:
- Promotional material must only be directed at those whose need for the information can reasonably be assumed.
- Conferences and seminars must be held in a venue which is conducive to the main event.
- The banning of supply, offer or promise of any gift or money as an inducement to prescribe, supply, sell or administer medicines.
- The banning of funding to compensate for time spent by healthcare professionals in attending events.
Pharma companies must now obtain certification from a doctor or pharmacist that its promotional material is in accordance with the code.
The new rules will be integrated into the codes of national bodies like the UK's ABPI, by the end of the year, and EFPIA will enforce compliance by carrying out annual audits.
Some countries, including the UK and France, already have tough codes of practice but recent EU accession countries may have to change their culture to comply with the new proposals.
Significantly, EFPIA has also signed an agreement with the Standing Committee of European Doctors that provides rules of engagement in the relationship between doctors and pharma companies for the first time.
The joint declaration covers a wide range of settings in which doctors and the industry work, including the provision of promotional materials to meetings, consultancy work and clinical research.
The agreement is a milestone in recognising the two-way nature of the relationship and mutual responsibility for ethical standards, but its uptake among UK doctors is not mandatory.
Des Spence, a Glasgow GP and spokesman for Nofreelunch said that most GPs would be oblivious to the new code and the framework.
He said the agreements showed the industry had made changes but said they represented "a vague sentiment" and had no 'teeth'. He added that healthcare professionals needed to "put their own house in order" and that the promotional culture was too well established to be changed.
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