Servier “named and shamed” for sales slides
pharmafile | March 21, 2007 | News story | Sales and Marketing |Â Â ethicsÂ
Servier has been publicly "named and shamed" for using inappropriate materials to train its sales reps.
Servier and another company, Shire Pharmaceuticals, were admonished through adverts in the BMJ and The Pharmaceutical Journal for separate activities deemed to have breached the industry's code of practice by bringing the industry into disrepute.
The sanction is reserved for the most serious transgressions and was one of a range of measures introduced in 2006 when the ABPI tightened up the UK industry's self-regulatory code.
Servier was disciplined over slides on how to target hospital staff, which it had used in a training course for NHS project co-ordinators.
The slides encouraged access to all levels of health professionals, even cleaners and security staff, as well as all parts of the hospital, without stating that such access must comply with the ABPI's code.
The Prescription Medicines Code of Practice Authority, which regulates the code, considered the material encouraged predatory behaviour in a hospital and advocated action likely to breach the code.
The company was also guilty of further, less serious, breaches of the code relating to the actions of a rep selling the company's osteoporosis treatment Proelos (strontium ranelate).
A hospital chief pharmacist complained to the PMCPA that the rep made more contacts with a consultant than was allowed under the code and provided biscuits and snacks for secretarial staff in order to gain access to health professionals.
Shire was ruled in breach of the code for salesforce promotional materials for its vitamin D/calcium deficiency treatment Calcichew-D3 Forte.
A leavepiece compared it to ProStrakan's Adcal-D3 and claimed Shire's product was preferred by 80% of patients, but gave no indication as to why a preference had been expressed.
The material was the subject of an earlier complaint last year, and the company had promised at the time to withdraw it after it was ruled to have breached the code.
The PMCPA ruled Shire had taken inadequate action over its undertaking to withdraw the materials and was thus likely to bring discredit to, and reduce confidence in, the industry.
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