Dear colleagues, friends and readers of this site, here I am again. The reason for my speech today could be narrowed down to "we already said it”.
Today with a certain astonishment and even with a pinch of satisfaction I read on Pharmakronos an intervention by the confirmed Minister of Health Lorenzin regarding something that already on 16 February 2011 had been the reason for my intervention on the sites of our sector. The article in question was called “the isf visits to doctors are bogus”1.
Minister Lorenzin's sentence goes like this "It is necessary to guarantee the truthfulness of the communications that pharmaceutical organizations are called upon to send to the supervisory authorities on the number of healthcare professionals visited on an annual basis".
It is neither my intention nor my role to become a judge or anything else, but I would also like to remind the most inattentive readers that this issue had already been highlighted in my article published on February 20112. Some passages of that intervention, I believe are even more current today, also in consideration of the affirmations of Minister Lorenzin.
“Those who have been carrying out their activity as scientific informants for years will be able to confirm with facts what has been known for years. The number of annual visits per doctor established by the various regulations on scientific information approved in several Italian regions and by the state conference–regions has never been respected. In all companies, in fact, the request for visits to the doctor has always been very high. In the past, a survey on the number of doctors visited daily by the ISF published on the internet had already highlighted various distortions, but lately the pressure from companies on the number of doctors visited daily and on the number of visits to be made per year has exploded again. While fixing theoretical work cycles (from 4 to 5 per year), in fact the ISFs are asked to concentrate their activity on a small number of doctors and carry out at least 2 or 3 visits per work cycle on these. This is the famous Share of Voice which tells us, the more visits the more sales. Basically 2 or 3 visits for 4 or 5 annual cycles and the total number of visits arrhythmically become from 8 to 15 visits per year, rather than the 5 planned annual visits.
“Unfortunately the truth is that the ISF cannot avoid complying with a specific corporate directive (never written) and that it is very difficult for pharmaceutical companies to run into legal problems for this reason.”
Before leaving another aspect, it seems to me fundamental and deserves an in-depth analysis not only at the ministerial level, but also by the State-Regions Conference and by the individual regional administrations. Numerous Regions have regulated scientific information on the basis of the guidelines indicated by the Conference of the Regions which provides that the number of visits carried out and free samples delivered are communicated to them and therefore it would be necessary for them to verify whether these obligations have been carried out by the pharmaceutical companies or not.
I conclude with good wishes. Let's hope that this wind of change, which seems to be blowing in Italy, will finally succeed, where years of struggles by the ISFs and some idealists have failed, that is, to make an important sector such as the pharmaceutical one really live up to the expectations of patients, doctors and all those who work there (ISF included).
A hug to all
Umberto Alderisi
umberto.alderisi@gmail.com
19.03.2014
