PhRMA bans drug-marketing gifts to doctors

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The board of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), which represents drugmakers, has adopted new ethics guidelines for interactions with health care professionals that forbids giving doctors gifts to promote drugs.
The new PhRMA Code, updated from 2002, prohibits the distribution of “non-educational items” – which a PhRMA news release says includes pens, mugs and other “reminder” objects adorned with a product or company logo – to health care providers and their staff.
Such items, though of minimal value, “may foster misperceptions that company interactions with health care professionals are not based on informing them about medical and scientific issues,” the code warns.
In addition, the code bars sales representatives from buying restaurant meals for health care professionals or providing them with “entertainment or recreational benefits,” but allows “occasional meals” in the doctors’ offices in conjunction with informational presentations.
Furthermore, the code requires that companies ensure that their representatives are sufficiently trained about applicable laws, regulations and industry codes of practice – including this code – that govern their interactions with health care providers, and that they assess their representatives periodically and take action if they’re not in compliance.
Overall, the code says, drug company representatives’ interactions with doctors “should be focused on informing the healthcare professionals about products, providing scientific and educational information, and supporting medical research and education.”
In a news release, Richard Clark, PhRMA chairman and chairman and CEO of Merck & Co. Inc., said “informative, ethical and professional relationships between health care providers” and drugmakers “are instrumental to effective patient care,” and drugmakers “take this responsibility seriously” and constantly seeking to “enhance these essential company-physician interactions and reinforce the integrity of information about our medicines.”
The code, which goes into effect next January, is voluntary; some states have passed laws to similar effect.
For more information about PhRMA and the new code, visit www.phrma.org.