Pharma Wins Unpopularity Contest in 2012
A global patient-centric survey demonstrates that the overall reputation of the pharmaceutical industry declined in 2012 even if firms like Lundbeck, Gilead Sciences and Novartis came out on top.
In the latest PatientView annual report, only 34% of the 600 patient groups questioned said that pharmaceutical companies had an “excellent” or “good” reputation during 2012 as compared with 42% in 2011. This study examined the corporate reputation of 29 pharmaceutical companies as well as the general pharmaceutical industry. A majority of the respondents from these patients groups were from the UK, Germany and the US while the main specialisations were neurology, cancer and chronic disease.
40% of the 2012 groups stated the pharmaceutical sector’s reputation had fallen in the past year while 50% described the industry’s pricing policies as “poor”. Pharma’s reputation dropped even further between 2011 and 2012 as the report stated that there was a 29% fall in managing adverse news about a product, 23% for ethical marketing practices and 19% for a good relationship with the media.
Patient groups cited several reasons for this decline in reputation, with one of them being a perpetual failure to help patients in southern European countries like Romania, Greece, Portugal and Spain gain access to medicines. Other reasons included a fixation with drugs that only offered short-term benefits, an inappropriate marketing of drugs including off-label indications, a lack of effort made to find new chemical entities (NCO’s) that were appropriate for neglected patient groups and an apparent lack of transparency especially in reporting the disappointing results of clinical trials. Their concluding reason for the drop in reputation indicated that “profit comes before making people well” as drug prices, in some instances, are still unaffordable for patients and payers.
Many of the 600 respondents in the 2012 study referred to negative press during the year to explain their lower opinion for some drugmakers on issues such as patient safety, transparency and company integrity. Pharmaceutical companies who were exposed to a large number of “bad stories” in 2012 witnessed a decline in their reputation while firms who were not affected by negative media benefited.
Lundbeck was pronounced the best at being transparent with external stakeholders and providing high-quality information to patients. Novartis received praise for its patient-centred strategy, Novo Nordisk for its record of ensuring patient safety, Gilead Sciences for acting with integrity and Allergan for supplying high-quality, useful products.
All in all, this survey demonstrates that the pharmaceutical industry could improve their corporate reputation in 2013 if they focus on medicines that offer long-term benefits, improve their transparency of clinical data and become more ethical in their marketing practices. The biggest challenge would be to simultaneously become patient-centric and increase sales as the pharmaceutical industry cannot always put individuals before profit.
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