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No to pharmaceutical firms'
"compliance support" programmes

In spring 2007, following massive protests, the French Health Minister was forced to withdraw draft legislation allowing the pharmaceutical firms' "compliance support" programmes. The proposed law permitted staff on the firms' payroll to ensure that patients were following their treatment for chronic conditions.

Pharmaceutical companies earn less money when a patient halts treatment, so increasingly they are attempting to set up customer loyalty programmes, as is clear from their marketing literature.

France's Health Minister instructed a senator to draft a new law on this issue, and commissioned a report on these programmes from the Social Affairs Inspectorate (IGAS) in charge of auditing social affairs matters]. The IGAS report, published belatedly, categorically recommends that these programmes should not be authorised, the only exception being the setting up of training programmes for drugs that are complex to administer, with no direct contact between the firm and the patient, and solely for drugs for which there is no alternative treatment available.

After vacillating, the government apparently chose to follow IGAS's recommendations. Prescrire calls on members of the French Parliament to be vigilant and not to permit anything that resembles an industry compliance support programme.

Pharmaceutical companies cannot be involved, even indirectly, with monitoring patients' treatment without there being a risk attached.

© Prescrire May 2008

Source: "Programmes d'"aide à l'observance" des firmes : l'IGAS contre la confusion des rôles " Rev Prescrire 2008; 28 (295) 384-385.


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