As we noted last month, AstraZeneca announced that it will be “scrapping payments for doctors to attend international medical congresses.” According to Reuters, “the move follows increased scrutiny …and could put pressure on rivals to follow suit.”
A recent article from Fox Business explained, Congresses are held in Europe and the U.S. every year on subjects like diabetes, heart and lung disease and cancer, during which hundreds of specialist physicians are flown in at the expense of drug makers–a practice that has become increasingly criticized as healthcare costs have risen. About half of all the congresses held around the world are related to life sciences.
AstraZeneca chief executive David Brennan announced the change of policy in low-key fashion at an industry conference in Istanbul in June. Brennan told Reuters that the company has decided to no longer pay for doctors to attend international scientific and medical congresses but will instead focus their educational efforts on local educational opportunities for healthcare professionals.
In addition, Brennan said he took the step because “AstraZeneca should not do anything that could be seen as an inducement to prescribers to use its products.”
An AstraZeneca spokesperson said that the company “wanted to tighten things up even further than the industry codes currently required or voluntarily suggest, because they never want to do anything that can be misinterpreted.” The spokesperson also recognized that the company was “the first to go to this extent.”
Richard Bergstrom, the director general of the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations, said that the decision to scrap payments for doctors to attend international medical congresses is “ground breaking but necessary if the pharmaceutical industry wants to improve its tarnished image.” He predicted that “others will follow.” Bergstrom also asserted that industry needs to find “ways of interacting which is more acceptable to society at large.”
In addition, Bergstrom acknowledged that companies also do not want to be seen “breaching new anti-bribery laws.” He explained that, “AstraZeneca’s move probably reflects concern that such practices might run foul of legislation in the U.S., and now the new bribery act in the U.K., depending on how you do this, and depending on how you invite these physicians.”
He called this change a “a wake-up call for the medical community and healthcare professionals who have gotten used to the fact the industry is paying for all this.”
Accordingly, he asserted that, “Congress organizers must realize that we’re in this together, and realize that we need to take away the unnecessary things that are still remaining–the unnecessary social activities, and the gala dinners–they’re just giving the wrong impression of a high science meeting.”
Consequently, “some doctors associations are responding very negatively, suggesting they regard this as something that they have a right to–getting the pharmaceutical industry’s money to pay for their education.”
Britain’s biggest drug maker, GlaxoSmithKline PLC (GSK), said it will continue funding trips for selected doctors to attend international medical congresses.
In the end, “large, world-class, academic conferences such as ASCO [American Society of Clinical Oncology], ADA [American Diabetes Association] and ERS [European Respiratory Society] act as leading forums for discussion around serious diseases areas such as oncology, diabetes and respiratory disease.” If companies continue in AstraZeneca’s footsteps, this could pose significant challenges to physicians because for many international healthcare professionals, the costs involved in attending these conferences may prove prohibitive without support.