top of page

The best doctors partner with Pharmaceutical Companies

Writer's picture: Nick LeachNick Leach


For the first time, Medicines NZ has begun to publish the payments made to doctors from pharmaceutical companies through transparency reporting.

This was met with a Stuff article written by Nikki MacDonald, concerned that doctors were being “bribed” and accepting gifts from Pharmaceutical Companies. A nice clickbait headline.

Having worked in the Pharmaceutical Industry for over 20 years I thought it was important someone provided a better understanding of how the industry works and highlight the real why for the activities highlighted in the article.

What was missing from the article is the significant benefit and improvement in health outcomes derived from the close collaboration between the industry and doctors.

Like all parts of life, progress is ongoing, and health is no different. The doctors who are the most up-to-date with the latest developments attend overseas and local medical conferences and work closely with the pharmaceutical companies that are bringing out the latest treatments in their specialty area.

If you are sick, these are the doctors you want to see to receive the best treatment. I was at a conference where doctors went through de-identified patient cases and asked a panel of experts what they would have done differently. You would be amazed at how different the experts would have treated the patients. It was their in-depth knowledge and understanding of the latest techniques and awareness of long-term data that drove the differences in treatment choices.

In the Stuff article, a significant number of payments are for speaker fees for doctors to attend pharma-sponsored meetings and present new data or data on their clinical experience. These doctors will be specialists that have attended international conferences, the purpose of these meetings is to upskill more junior doctors and doctors who did not attend the overseas meetings. Large international scientific conferences are where doctors learn the latest clinical data, treatment techniques, and guidelines. These meetings are where progress in medicine is disseminated. Almost all these meetings will also be sponsored by Pharmaceutical Companies and many if not most of the clinical data presented is also funded by Pharmaceutical Companies. The majority of the data presented will be new data on their latest medicines.

Pharmaceutical Companies in ANZ have extremely tight policies and procedures to ensure any payments made to doctors are reimbursement for educational services delivered, nothing more. If doctors are sponsored to attend overseas meetings, in most cases the doctor will have requested this through the medical division of Pharmaceutical Companies and part of the responsibility will be to come back and present what they have learned to their colleagues, supporting local peer-to-peer education.

Nikki’s article also highlights advisory board payments. These meetings are how the industry collaborates with doctors. These meetings provide the companies with feedback on patient programs, materials, and how pharmaceutical companies can meet the unmet needs of both patients and clinicians. There are also strict policies and procedures in place on how these advisory board meetings are run and what topics can and cannot be discussed.

Local conference sponsorships were also raised in the article. In NZ most specialty meetings will be sponsored by Pharmaceutical Companies. If you were to look at the meeting agendas, you would find a variety of topics related to improving the specialty area and discussion to determine best practices. Again, these meetings improve the standard of care and ensure NZ doctors remain up to date with best practices.

What is also ironic in NZ is that it is highly likely the Pharmaceutical Companies who sponsor meetings and partake in ongoing doctor educational activities likely have a monopoly as Pharmac only tends to fund one product for a particular therapeutic area. The majority of specialist medications can also only be prescribed if patients meet strict qualifications criteria. This is to limit the use of higher-cost medicines, ensuring they are only used by people who need them the most.

What is also missing from the narrative and reporting, is the progress in improving health outcomes that have been achieved through breakthroughs in medicine. New medicines redefine what is possible and redefine clinical practice and drive better patient outcomes. Without the Pharmaceutical industry, none of this would be possible. This is achieved by close collaboration between doctors and the industry. There are standards and processes in place to ensure this is done in an ethical and safe way.

Let's consider the alternative, the pharmaceutical industry does no activities or sponsorships.

There are two possible options.

  1. The health system would need to increase its funding to support doctors to attend conferences. For local scientific meetings, delegates would have to pay thousands of dollars to attend these meetings, which would again need to be funded by the govt, or specialists who have private clinics would need to increase consulting fees to cover the additional costs.

  2. NZ doctors no longer attend overseas meetings or have local specialty meetings.

Neither option is ideal, either the taxpayer wears the cost or NZ falls behind the rest of the world in patient care. Isolation, proven by communist Russia limits progress.

If you speak with the industry in NZ, you will find a small team of passionate people working to improve the lives of New Zealanders. Their goal is to ensure, the right patient, right time, and right outcome. The way they do this is by working closely with doctors and supporting programs, meetings, and studies that help achieve this goal.

If you have the misfortune to become unwell, find the best doctor in your area, they will be on the Medicines NZ transparency reporting list.

If a doctor says they don’t engage with pharmaceutical companies and don’t see pharmaceutical representatives, run… get out of their office as fast as you can!


Comentários


bottom of page