Pharma treated as though ‘selling cyanide’
pharmafile | November 9, 2012 | News story | Manufacturing and Production, Medical Communications, Research and Development, Sales and Marketing | ABPI, NHS, Stephen Whitehead
APBI chief executive Stephen Whitehead claimed that pharma companies are sometimes made to feel as though they are manufacturing poison rather than healthcare products.
In a hard-hitting speech at the ABPI Member Conference, he said: “At times one would think we were selling cyanide, not medicines.”
His criticisms went far wider than the usual ABPI hobby-horse about NICE-approved drugs not being taken up on the NHS.
While affirming his support for the NHS, which he called the UK’s ‘last religion’, Whitehead still insisted the ‘sacred cow’ needed to be attacked for its failings.
Mirroring health secretary Jeremy Hunt’s personal recollections of the NHS at Hunt’s Conservative Party conference speech last month, Whitehead mentioned his parents’ NHS experiences.
But whereas Hunt spoke of his mother and father working in public health, Whitehead pointed up the inadequacies of his own parents’ care.
He also launched a broadside against incessant NHS rebranding, phones that don’t get answered, money wasted on management consultants and IT systems that don’t work.
As expected he did also air the ABPI’s long-standing concerns over the issues of access to drugs on the NHS and their cost.
“In the UK, the reward for the risk we [the pharma industry] take is hopelessly out of line,” Whitehead said. “An industry that has enabled the very survival of the NHS is at a crossroads in the UK.”
It was a mistake to regard drugs as purely transactional, he went on. “Modern medicines cost money but they are an investment,” and added: “Without research there’s no healthcare system.”
He painted a gloomy picture of the UK life sciences sector, talking about declining R&D and job losses, and said that pharma “is delivering billions of savings to the NHS as patents expire”.
“Over the next three years the system is set to save £3.4 billion as generics are prescribed in the place of branded medicines,” he continued. “Treating us as a cash cow can only go on so long. We do not sell medicines, we sell outcomes.”
If things don’t improve, he suggested: “Patients should probably take up prayer.”
He also accused politicians of being cowardly over failing to explain to the public that fewer hospitals were needed as health thinking shifts towards care at home. “Healthcare is political,” Whitehead said. “All smiles and hospital visits.”
This meant pharma remained a target since cutting a drugs bill is easier “than closing a second-rate hospital”, he suggested.
Sir Ian Carruthers, NHS South of England chief executive, in part repudiated some of Whitehead’s argument on access in another session at the conference.
He suggested that on one unnamed drug the pharma industry’s data on access had been ‘very inaccurate’ and said there was a need for greater co-operation.
But Sir Ian added: “NICE compliance is my greatest concern. We have a problem with uptake of medicines and technologies. We need to invest in implementing the [NICE] recommendations.”
However, in a reference to pharma companies undercutting one another he said: “There are lots of behaviours where the industry doesn’t help itself on price.” But he also admitted: “There are lots of behaviours where the NHS doesn’t help the industry on price.”
Whitehead acknowledged that pharma had to be honest about its own issues, and called for more openness on data, payments by pharma firms to health professionals and embracing conversations on issues such as drugs cost.
Adam Hill
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