PharmaCertify™

The PharmaCertify™ Team

Break out the tutus and tap shoes and fire up your fingers, bows and reeds. It’s recital time! Let the tears of pride and joy flow, moms and dads. As the little ones prepare to showcase their best dance moves, we showcase all the news fit to print from the world of compliance, with this week’s News Week in Review.

Ranbaxy danced into the headlines this week, announcing a $500 million settlement to resolve charges it sold adulterated drugs and made false statements to the FDA. The company pled guilty to three felony counts of violating drug safety law and making false statements. Criminal fines and forfeitures total $150 million and the remaining $350 million will settle civil cases with both the feds and states.

Also playing out of tune was device manufacturer, C.R. Bard. The company signed a non-prosecution agreement with the DOJ and agreed to pay a $48.3 million settlement to resolve False Claims Act charges. Bard was accused of providing grants, free equipment and other kickbacks to physicians and other customers who purchased its prostate cancer radiation treatment.

The Sunshine Act is definitely in the spotlight these days. Managing all the data certainly presents a challenge, but Michael Krouse, CEO at the Ontario, California, Convention and Visitor’s Bureau offers advice for meeting planners on how to simplify the process of tracking physician spend at medical meetings.

Krouse advises planners to negotiate packages with the venues, look for hotels willing to bundle, and find venues that offer the most value for the physicians. He suggests planners negotiate a flat meal rate for physicians, have internet service bundled into room charges and work with the local convention and visitor’s bureau to find multiple hotels willing to offer lodging at the same rate.

Social media marketing has been lurking in the wings for life sciences companies. A new survey of healthcare professionals finds nearly three quarters of respondents have been conservative in the use of social media. Respondents attribute their careful approach to (spoiler alert)…lack of FDA guidance. Of the existing platforms, YouTube was the clear winner, with 68% of respondents saying it was the most appropriate for sharing information. Twitter and Flickr received the lowest marks.  About half of those surveyed say companies should monitor social media sites to understand patient needs and concerns.

The curtain continues to rise on FCPA investigatory expenses at Wal-Mart. The company nearly doubled its budgeted projections for investigations. During the first quarter, the company spent $73 million on investigation and compliance program expenses. So far, Wal-Mart has spent $230 million on its FCPA investigation.

Our grand finale this week takes us to Australia where the government is under pressure to prohibit facilitation payments. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has criticized the country for not taking ant-bribery seriously. Australian companies facing strict anti-bribery laws while operating in other countries may now face books and records violations in their own country, since facilitation payments are usually not recorded. One expert believes Australia will change its law to mirror the UK Bribery Act, and suggests companies adopt a global approach to anti-corruption rather than one focused on managing multiple local requirements.

As the final curtain falls on this week’s production, we close by focusing on your own anti-corruption training requirements. Investigatory costs are high and more countries are making the bribery of government officials a priority. If anti-corruption training is high on your radar, PharmaCertify’s Understanding and Preventing Bribery in the Global Life Sciences Marketplace features a comprehensive review of the FCPA and Anti-kickback Statute, with case studies targeted specifically to the pharmaceutical industry.

With that, we’ll take our final bow and wish everyone a good day and great week!

The PharmaCertify™ Team

Set your phasers to “Woohoo” everyone, Star Trek: Into Darkness opens in just a few days!! Not a sci-fi or Star Trek nerd? You don’t have to be, if the first movie is any indication. Great storytelling is great storytelling, regardless of genre. If nothing else, you’ll like be treated to quite a fashion show if you attend the film on its opening day. While we here at the News Week in Review anxiously await the opening, we realize there is other news to cover. So, it’s “engines to full, Scotty,” as we blast off with this week’s News Week in Review.

The Chinese government appears ready to boldly go where it hasn’t gone before – into anti-bribery enforcement. While companies doing business in China are accustomed to dealing FCPA enforcement, the Chinese government is poised to add its own anti-bribery laws to the mix. China’s high court and highest enforcement agency published guidance on the country’s two anti-bribery laws, one criminal and one civil, at the end of 2012. The emphasis has been on the criminal aspect of bribery.

The laws are not specific as to what constitutes a violation, allowing for broad interpretation by enforcement agencies. The guidance also made clear that enforcement efforts would be directed against the person giving the bribe, whereas past enforcement had been directed at the person accepting the bribe. So far, multi-national corporations have avoided prosecution, but with the government’s current penchant for pursuing high-profile and scandalous cases, the first one against a multination corporation may not be in the distant future.

Conducting anti-corruption due diligence during an acquisition is about as easy as negotiating peace with the Klingons. Mintz-Levin developed five steps to help companies minimize their FCPA successor liability in an acquisition. The due diligence is critical since the acquiring company can be on the hook for the actions of the company it’s acquiring.

Could there be trouble on the communications deck at CVS? The drug company announced it will no longer send out refill reminders that are funded by pharma companies. The company cited upcoming changes in patient data privacy requirements of HIPAA as the reason for the change. The change in the law will restrict the use of money from pharma for “only the cost of labor, supplies and postage to make the communication.”

Legal experts say CVS may be acting from an abundance of caution, but even so other pharmacies may follow suit. Determining the cost of the communications could prove difficult, and if there is no profit in continuing these programs, pharmacies may be less inclined to do so. CVS says it will continue with its own reminder programs.

Is Dr. McCoy on the list? According to a study by the New England Journal of Medicine, one in four doctors in Massachusetts have received a gift of $50 or more from a pharmaceutical or medical device company over the past two years. During that time, $76 million worth of gifts was provided to HCPs, with $67 million of that being compensation for bona fide services. (Incidentally, Leonard “Bones” McCoy did not make the list. He’s from the South, by way of…well…outer space).

On the Sunshine front, the news around the law continues to move at warp speed, with CMS coming off a busy week. The agency released the list of Teaching Hospitals for 2013, and posted a call for comments on the burden of the data collection process as they seek to refine that process.

Well, that’s it in the compliance news galaxy for last week. Have a great week everyone and we’ll see you at the movies and the conventions! Hopefully, Shatner will go easy on us.

The PharmaCertify™ Team

Sweet! Today is No Diet Day. Now, in all fairness this is not about eating unhealthily, but more about not letting diets consume your life and the importance of what the experts refer to as a “healthy relationship with food.” Good stuff right? Of course, if a cheeseburger happens to make its way into onto our table today, so much the better. So while you contemplate what diet rules you’re going to break this week, we’ll get started with this week’s News Week in Review.

The Executive Director of the Healthcare Communication Coalition, John Kamp, says the FDA needs to develop a new relationship with off-label promotion regulations. As we know, the landmark decision in the Caronia case established the precedence that truthful promotion of off-label uses of drugs was protected by the First Amendment. Mr. Kamp says the FDA needs to re-evaluate its regulations and look beyond the product label when developing a standard of truthful promotion. PhRMA’s General Counsel, Mit Spears, agrees, saying the current standard is too high, considering off-label use of some drugs is the current standard of care and appear in Compendia.

According to a study in PLoS Medicine, Sweden’s model of self regulating drug advertising may not be quite the right “diet” for assuring that ads are not violative. The study analyzed anti-depressant advertising between 1994 and 2003 and found that 34% of the advertising failed a review by the industry’s monitoring group. Study authors say that number should have been higher because their review found ads with exaggerated claims that made it through the review. The authors say that since only a third of the advertising was flagged, there is a problem with the system. They point out that while fines for unethical advertising have risen, they are still too small.

Pharmaceutical and medical device companies may want to start tracking physician spend outside the U.S. as they implement systems to comply with the Sunshine Act. The SEC and DOJ are turning up the heat on FCPA enforcement and healthcare companies may find tracking this data helpful in their FCPA compliance monitoring efforts. In addition, physician transparency laws and polices are quickly popping up around the globe. While the impact of complying with Sunshine is a daunting task, collection of data internationally needs to be a consideration as well.

Australia’s generic drug makers say their prices will feel a lot more bloated if a pending transparency bill is passed. The Generic Medicine Industry Association says the administrative and cost burden would force drug makers to raise the price of the medicine. Other groups complain the bill is too restrictive because it only applies to pharmaceutical companies and not medical device companies. In addition to requiring companies to report spend information, the bill would prohibit companies from paying sponsorships for physicians to attend international medical conferences.

A new study finds physicians aren’t exactly eating up the details of the Sunshine Act. The survey of primary care physicians found that the vast majority were either unfamiliar with the Act or only somewhat familiar. The numbers are somewhat better for principal investigators, with about two-thirds of those surveyed either having a basic understanding of the law or at least having heard of it. Good news on that front though – 77% of principal investigators said the law would not change the likelihood of them participating as an investigator site.

With Sunshine hotter than ever, the DOJ ramping up it enforcement of the FCPA and the FDA holding fast to current drug marketing regulations, now is the time to rethink your company’s compliance training diet. At PharmaCertify, we focus exclusively on commercial compliance for the life sciences industry. Our customizable eLearning modules and iPad apps bring your reps up-to-date promotional and regulatory training where they need it most – in the field and at their fingertips.

Have a great week everyone and enjoy every sandwich!

The PharmaCertify™ Team

I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream! Spring has definitely flung and the dreams of a visit to the local ice cream shop dance in our head. There’s nothing like that cold, sugary treat on an early spring day. So, while you contemplate your choice of chocolate/vanilla twist, gelato or a froyo, we’ll launch into our own little treat: this week’s News in Review.

If you thought 31 flavors was impressive, the American Medical Student Association has that beat, as they will add 400 teaching hospitals to its PharmFree Scorecard that evaluates conflict of interest policies at American Medical Schools. Going forward there will be two scorecards; one for medical school and one for teaching hospitals.

The plain old vanilla payment information posted by Pro Publica and subsequently reported by various media outlets around the country often miss the point of the purpose behind those payments, according to Policy and Medicine. A summary of several of the articles shows that while the headlines focus on the dollars, a deeper dive into the articles reveals the research and physician education behind the numbers. One physician even said he received none of the money attributed to him in the database. All of the money went to the research institute where he works. Physicians cited the importance of learning from their peers, and felt there was no conflict in being a paid speaker for products which they believed in.

The ban in India on doctors accepting gifts from pharma may be melting just a bit. The industry is concerned that the ban on doctors accepting sponsorships to medical conferences will leave doctors uninformed about the latest treatments. In response, India’s department of pharmacy is moving to legalize pharma sponsorship of medical education conferences. The proposed change to the code of ethics would allow doctors to accept economy class travel to meetings, as well as meals and registration fees for up to three international conferences per year.

The apparent freeze in enforcement of the UK Bribery Act may be about to thaw. According to a Compliance Week insider, vigorous enforcement of the Act is close at hand. Legislation that would allow American-style deferred prosecution agreements is in the final stages of adoption. The Serious Fraud Office will have the ability to resolve cases quickly, and companies may be more inclined to self-report.

The cherry on top of our sundae this week is the Pharmalot interview with OPDP chief, Tom Abrams, regarding the much ballyhooed guidance for social media drug promotion. Guess what, kids, it’s coming…someday…soonish. According to Abrams, the guidance is a top priority for the FDA. He says the agency is continually meeting with industry groups, technology companies and other stakeholders as they work on developing the guidance. Pharmalot talked to Mr. Abrams about topics like the one-click rule, limited text media for promotion, and pre-dissemination guidance. A firm date was not given for release of the guidance. However, Mr. Abrams said OPDP would make the required July 2014 deadline, and their intention was to release the guidance as soon as it was ready.

Well, that’s the scoop on this week’s News. Before we start chasing the ice cream man down the street, we have a question about your FCPA and UK Bribery Act training. With this week’s news of increased UK Bribery Act enforcement and the DOJ’s continuing interest in pursuing the pharma and med device industries for FCPA violations, anti-corruption training is more important than ever. PharmaCertify’s Understanding and Preventing Bribery in the Global Life Science Marketplace customizable eLearning module covers the details of the laws, and the unique situations that make our industry a target for enforcement agencies.

Have a great week everyone!