"Big Pharma's Crime Spree" Perception is the new reality
Nov/09/2009 12:45 Filed in: Drug
Industry & The Media
About 15 percent of all drug sales in the U.S. are for unapproved uses without adequate evidence the medicines work, according to a study by Randall Stafford, a medical professor at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. He estimates that doctors write more than 10 million such prescriptions each year.
In the era of transparency and intense scrutiny because of healthcare legislation the playing has not changed; it'e been completely redesigned and moved.
First let's be clear about something. A lot of physicians use drugs for off-label use without any marketing from drug companies. You may find this hard to believe but in fact it's true. The drug companies who have been "caught" promoting drugs off label I am sure did a cost benefit analysis of getting caught. If the potential sales and profits of off label marketing outweigh the potential fines than I am sure a quite nod was given to go ahead by people who were more interested in their own paychecks than patients health.
If a drug company blatantly breaks the law and not only should the company be held accountable but the people responsible should face jail time. One other reason drug companies keep breaking the law may be because prosecutors and judges have been unwilling to use the ultimate sanction -- a felony conviction that would render a company’s drugs ineligible for reimbursement by state health programs and federal Medicare. This could be a death sentence for a drug company and it is extreme but if the same things continue to happen than obviously something has to be done.
What is lost in all this negative media is the fact that drugs do save lives. 25 years ago a diagnosis of HIV (AIDS) was paramount to a death sentence. Now people are living normal lives with HIV. Cancer death rates have decreased as a result of new drugs and high cholesterol no longer means a life could be cut short by coronary heart disease. It would be interesting to ask the writers of these negative articles if they wanted a drug that could keep them alive if they needed it?
OFF TRACK
So what happened and why now? To think about this take a trip back to the 90's when DTC advertising was approved by the FDA. Soon the drug industry realized that patients were consumers of healthcare and that they could market drugs with good science and marketing. As the industry began to grow it attracted more and more investors and Wall Street analysts who poured money into the drug and medical device industry. This meant that year after year companies had to improve sales and grow.
So the shift from patients to investors took place and in my opinion with it more pressure to deliver sales results and which in turn led to really bad decisions by some employees. It seems that those who spoke up were let go while others took the money and ran. CEO's came and went and with every change more distance from consumers and patients to the balance sheet. How many CEO's have we really heard stand up and tell employees to focus on the patient instead of the balance sheet? How many decisions have been made based on accounting rather than patients?
I am also a realist and I know that companies, in order to survive, can't spend money without getting something back in return but I also strongly believe that good medicine (and good marketing) can turn consumers into customers for life. Rather than embrace faceless segments and bombard them with tested messages the industry needs to retool and think about the power of conversations.
Yes, the drug industry has a lot to be shameful for but if they don't learn the key lesson of the importance of patients and focusing on customers than it's a lesson which has NOT been learned. Wall Street has done a lot to put America and Americans on the brink and it should be no surprise that they have done the same to the drug industry which very much needs to remember what's important.
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