Pandemic travel restrictions have shut down many of pharma's paid healthcare provider speaker programs—and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) thinks it should stay that way.
In a Special Fraud Alert issued (PDF) Monday by its inspector general’s office, HHS urged pharma companies and device makers to reconsider restarting in-person paid healthcare professional speaker programs when COVID-19 restrictions lift.
The rare special alert—the HHS inspector general's first since 2014—looks to take advantage of the current program pause, targeting the $2 billion that drug and device companies reported paying to healthcare professionals for speaker-related services during the past three years.
“We are issuing this alert during the pandemic emergency, which is necessarily curtailing many in-person activities,” the alert says, adding that pharma companies should take this time to “assess the need for in-person programs given the risks associated with offering or paying related remuneration.”
It similarly warned healthcare professionals themselves, asking that they “consider the risks of soliciting or receiving remuneration related to speaker programs given other available means to gather information relevant to providing appropriate treatment for patients.”
Paid speaker programs have proven problematic for some pharma companies over the years. Novartis recently settled with the federal government in a seven-year-long legal battle for using thousands of speaker programs as a way to disguise bribes to doctors from 2002 to 2011. The Swiss drugmaker agreed to pay about $600 million to the government, along with $50 million to resolve state Medicaid claims.
As part of its deal with the same HHS office that just issued the fraud alert about the programs, Novartis agreed to cut back on future speaker programs.
And in 2016, Salix Pharmaceuticals agreed to a $54 million civil fraud lawsuit settlement with HHS, admitting it paid doctors as speakers for programs that were mostly social events where little or no time was spent discussing drugs. Salix was bought in 2015 by Valeant, which changed its name to Bausch Health in 2018.
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The HHS inspector general specifically called out pharma industry trade group PhRMA, saying it was “skeptical about the educational value” of programs such as those outlined in PhRMA guidelines for healthcare professionals. The OIG pointed to its own investigations that reveal these professionals often “receive generous compensation to speak at programs offered under circumstances that are not conducive to learning or to speak to audience members who have no legitimate reason to attend.”
But PhRMA sees things differently. “Ethical relationships with healthcare professionals are critical to the biopharmaceutical industry’s mission of helping patients, which includes ensuring health care professionals have the latest, most accurate information available regarding prescription medicines," it said in a statement.
"The PhRMA Code on relationships with U.S. healthcare professionals reinforces the industry’s intention that interactions with healthcare professionals are professional exchanges designed to benefit patients and to enhance the practice of medicine,” PhRMA added.