Sanjay Parekh, MD at Web Expenses talks about the –
- Looming threat to Big Pharmas in the UK
- Drug representative battalions
- Need for greater transparency
WebExpenses is an award winning provider of web-based expenses solutions software serving customers across a diverse range of industries and sizes. WebExpenses was set up to offer a simple, innovative solution to the often manual and time consuming task of managing expenses.
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Good Stuff Happens in 1:1 Meetings: Why you need them and how to do them well
Anti Bribery Act & its Implications on the Pharma Sector
2. Sanjay Parekh, MD at Web Expenses talks about the –
◦ Looming threat to Big Pharmas in the UK
◦ Drug representative battalions
◦ Need for greater transparency
3. Drug Reps are an invaluable resource to both doctors &
drug companies
UK’s pharmaceutical industry employs 83,000 people and
generates £29.3 billion of exports in 2009
Britain’s medical-rep sales force may soon come up on
SFOs legal radar
The pharmaceutical industry could be placed in severe
financial and legal peril by the latest Bribery Act
4. Britain’s healthcare and pharmaceutical sector lacks
transparency
British pharmaceutical companies do not disclose their
sales and sponsorship spending
The PMCPA recently found leading international drug
companies were spending millions on hospitality, in order to
forge close links with doctors, nurses and staff who hold
the purse strings to the NHS’s £12 billion drug budget
Recent US company figures show that one pharmaceutical
giant spent £2.24 billion of its budget on “marketing, sales
and admin costs” in UK
5. The latest Bribery Act has the power to impose limitless
fines and 10-year jail terms
The Act –
◦ Outlaws the provision of any financial or other incentives to
“perform an act improperly”
◦ Bans doctors from requesting, agreeing to receive, or even
accepting any inducements
◦ Holds company Directors responsible for any bribes by
employees or associates, even if they were unaware of them
◦ Applies to any foreign companies deemed to have a
business connection to Britain
6. The PMCPA revelations will raise alarm bells in many
corporate boardrooms as some of the world’s major
medicine giants figure prominently in this report
Cephalon were found to have provided “inappropriate
hospitality” to 13 health professionals at a medical
congress
Pfizer were accused of hosting parties and providing
overnight stays at luxury hotels
Napp was accused of taking 17 delegates on business-
class flights to Canada
7. The ABCP recently found Abbott Laboratories guilty of
splashing out thousands of pounds on alcohol-fuelled trips
for doctors to Wimbledon, race-courses and even strip-
clubs
Abbott Laboratories admitted the hospitality activities for
which it was penalised were never even checked by Head
Office because the expenses claims did not exceed £4,000
The company claimed it was unaware of these activities
and blamed a “narrow silo” of its employees
However, under the latest Bribery Act, this is no defence
8. Companies are no longer liable for acts of bribery if they
can prove they had adequate systems in place to enforce
the law in their business
They are ending their reliance on FDs to combat frauds
The pharma industry will have to turn to novel solutions
to avert prosecution
Companies will have to enforce tough expenses-rules
by requiring employees to enter claims on the move as
soon as costs are incurred
9. Our software enables expenses claims to be both entered
and checked remotely from any location, providing an
instant portal into the activities of all company sales-reps
The software instantly notifies employees and FDs of
unlawful claims whenever a claim breaches company policy
These systems act as bullet-proofing against false
allegations, because the full, up-to-the-minute audit-trail is
safely held in a central online repository and can be made
instantly-available to regulators
10. Do you wish to know more about
the UKs Anti-Bribery Act?
Download our PDF to understand
the implications of the Act across
the entire Industrial sector.