Search results

The purpose of the study is to review The False Claims Act (FCA) settlements and challenges facing the industry to suggest the motivation behind firms’ alleged fraudulent activity. FCA has been applied against pharmaceutical companies by the US Government to combat marketing fraud including kickbacks, improper pricing and off-label promotion. The interests of the US Government and medical professionals are also considered. Changes to the law governing pharmaceutical marketing practices are recommended.

Cases settled under the FCA between 2005 and 2012 were identified by accessing the US Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) Corporate Integrity Agreements Web site and annual reports and the quitamhelp.com Web site. Case details were collected from US Department of Justice press releases, DHHS annual reports, and case documents in the Public Access to Court Electronic Records database.

Of the settled cases in the final sample, improper pricing practices were evident in 33 per cent of the cases; off-label promotion in 52 per cent; and both in 15 per cent of the cases. Forty-eight per cent of the alleged fraudulent marketing activity occurred within the brands’ first year and 68 per cent within the first two years on the market. Reported settlements ranged from US$4 million to US$4.3 billion.

This research simultaneously considers business issues facing the pharmaceutical industry and alleged fraudulent marketing activity to recommend changes to the law governing drug promotion. Changes have the potential to improve the balance between the respective interests of industry, medicine and government and to improve compliance and patient care in the future.

In the 1960s thalidomide, a popular new drug considered to be safe and effective, was revealed to cause severe nerve damage and birth defects in newborn infants, prompting health officials to ban the use of the drug and tighten overall restrictions on new drugs and drug use. Twenty years later, after recognizing the positive effects of thalidomide when treating patients with leprosy and its potential role in the treatment of certain types of cancer and cases of HIV/AIDS, the Celgene corporation would be forced to contend with stringent FDA regulations, liability concerns, public skepticism, and poor mass media portrayal in order to secure the drug's approval.

To illustrate how regulators are subject to political pressure, which companies much recognize and consider when making business decisions.

Off-label drug prescribing by healthcare providers is a growing practice. Yet, the US Food and Drug Administration bans the marketing of drugs for off-label uses. In recent years, legal challenges by the pharmaceutical industry have chipped away government restrictions on off-label drug promotion. Although the changing legal landscape has been discussed, this paper aims to examine how key stakeholders and policy-makers might interact to provide a more transparent marketing environment for off-label drug discussions in the patient–provider relationship.

Drawing on a variety of sources, the authors assess the current marketing landscape of off-label drugs and some of the issues that challenge the healthcare provider–patient relationship. The authors then examine opportunities to improve the off-label promotion environment and the relevant decision-making theories that key stakeholders need to consider when formulating marketing efforts and policies.

The authors suggest that fewer restrictions on truthful, non-misleading off-label drug promotion provide an opportunity to improve drug knowledge and, importantly, healthcare provider and consumer decision-making. Key stakeholders should consider, among other solutions, criteria for defining truthful information on off-label drugs, alternative methods of approval of off-label uses and ubiquitous icons to identify off-label prescribing to all stakeholders.

Rather than rehash the legal landscape of off-label drug promotion, this paper focuses on how the healthcare provider–patient relationship is impacted and how stakeholders can improve information flow in this changing environment.

Richard Alpert, senior partner at Evergreen Investments, must decide which of his two best employees to promote to the position of managing VP. He had initially preferred Charlie Pace over Daniel Faraday, but that decision had become less clear-cut when Alpert inadvertently overheard an office conversation and learned that Pace was taking Adderall, a stimulant primarily prescribed for people suffering from attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Pace did not have ADHD and apparently obtained the medication by deceiving a physician. Alpert is faced with a number of questions, including whether it was fair to Faraday—or any other high-performing employee—to be passed over for promotion in favor of someone who illicitly boosted his performance with a substance he did not medically need.

Examines unit pricing of grocery products, a recent business response to the forces of consumerism in the USA, and its effects on the consumer, the retailer and the manufacturer. States that, as a pricing device, unit pricing is not entirely new, as products such as meats, dairy products and many fresh fruits and vegetables have been unit priced for years. Concludes that, before the full impact of unit pricing can be assessed, additional research questions need to be answered.

Pharmaceutical sales representatives (PSRs) have been shown to influence the prescribing patterns of physicians. Some of the blame has been shifted from physicians to PSRs due to perceived inadequacies in PSRs' education and certification. The purpose of this paper is to review the literature regarding the current certification requirements for PSRs, motivation for nationally standardized certification and the controversy surrounding pharmaceutical detailing impact on physicians' prescribing behavior.

Articles related to certification for PSRs were identified via searches of PubMed and IPA from inception to March 2011. Search terms included PSRs, PSRs certification, PSRs registration, PSRs education, and PSRs requirements. Articles describing the roles and responsibilities of PSRs, physician and public perception of PSRs, certification processes, and the future of PSRs' roles were included. An internet search was also performed to identify articles in the lay press related to this topic.

This paper shows that the certification for PSRs may become necessary, or even required, to help ensure that the prescribing patterns of physicians are not negatively affected due to false information coming from the PSRs. Therefore, ensuring that PSRs are well certified can lead to better health outcomes for patients. Although pharmaceutical companies do not require certification to gain employment as a sales representative, the certification provides a good knowledge base and insight into the industry.

The paper shows that appropriate training and certification of PSRs may be on the rise for this career path.

This study aims to increase awareness and educate the reader about health-care fraud targeting seniors in the USA to help stakeholders better understand, recognize and prevent this type of fraud.

This paper collects statistics on the current state of health care frauds committed against seniors, and examines related cases and laws.

The authors find this type of fraud is highly prevalent and expected to increase. Current laws preventing this fraud from occurring are multifold and complex. While prevention strategies through law enforcement have been somewhat successful, a reduction in resources may put seniors at an increased risk in the years to come.

Without additional prevention strategies, the problem will likely escalate with a growing population of older adults. This study encourages further research into effective prevention strategies and methods to fight health-care fraud against seniors.

Health-care fraud and its associated costs pose a significant threat to the society and economy of the USA. Reducing this fraud will not only reduce the costs to the US economy but also improve the physical and mental well-being of senior victims, reduce their mortality and hospitalization rates and improve the public trust placed to health-care providers.

This study highlights how health-care fraud is committed against seniors. With the projected trend of an aging US population, educating stakeholders, increasing awareness and applying tools to protect seniors will be important to reduce the absolute scope of this problem in the future.

Self-inflicted crises (SIC)– either intentionally induced or at least carelessly accepted – can tremendously damage a corporation’s reputation and legitimacy in the eyes of the stakeholders. While academia usually advices companies to accept full responsibility, practice shows that by far not all companies rely on such a responsible strategy. In practice, corporations choose various response strategies ranging from apologies, over diminishing approaches to full denials. By investigating a large data set embracing several countries and industries covering 696 cases of SIC, the authors analyze how corporations respond to such events and compare these response strategies across countries and types of crises.

This book chapter follows a domain-spanning approach by combining corporate social responsibility (CSR), crisis management, and stakeholder management to investigate how companies aim at solving crises. Drawing on attribution theory and situational crisis communication theory, the results reveal that corporations often do not follow the prevailing recommendation to take responsibility. The authors find that in the majority of cases, internationally active corporations try to deny or diminish their responsibility for the crises. Hence, the findings suggest that the concept of CSR is not working in the case of SIC since not only the existence of such corporate behavior but also the use of denial and diminish strategies contradicts the idea of corporate responsibility. Moreover, the authors shed light on possible differences and preferences toward a specific response strategy between countries and between different types of crises.

The authors contribute to the growing literature in the field of crisis management and crisis response strategies by investigating a large data set embracing several countries and industries. In this regard, the study differs from previous qualitative studies and experimental research as it is based on a large cross-country and cross-company set of secondary data. Thereby, the study allows drawing conclusions for a wide range of corporations and countries, hence increasing its general applicability.

The purpose of this paper is to examine and review the available literature on ethical/unethical behaviour of pharmaceutical companies and to determine the ethical issues, unethical behaviour by analysing, summarising and categorising the factors related to these issues and unethical behaviour as were studied during the period 2008-2017. Essentially, this paper presents a critical analysis of the available literature on the subject and avenues for future research.

This paper adopted the systematic review approach to achieve the purpose of this study and examines the most relevant literature from online existing database sources, available between 2008-2017 by using the keyword search method. Then studies are categorised and summarised, using previously developed theories and frameworks, which have provided evidence to the universal consensus that ethical behavioural outcomes are dependent on the interplay of individual, organisational and environmental factors and have reordered to fulfil the purpose.

The findings identify that ethical issues related to pharmaceutical companies as were studied during the period 2008-2017 are drug pricing, drug safety and gift-giving. The organisational variables appeared to be the dominant cause of these ethical issues and unethical practices along with other determinants such as environmental and stakeholders. A large number of studies were in the western country context. Theoretical research has studied more comparatively empirical studies.

This review provides insights for understanding the ethical issues, unethical behaviour and determinants related to these issues of pharmaceutical companies and provides insights where the literature is standing. This review only includes studies between 2008-2017, which are related to the ethical issue of pharmaceutical companies, therefore, the view is only of the past 10 years papers. This review provides gaps and insight into the source of ideas for future research and will help the researchers in guiding ethics-related information in the context of pharmaceutical companies.

This study will help the practitioners and policymakers in informing about the issues that required the urgent need to solve and will shed some light to focus and formulate strategies for successful competitive advantage. This study will help researchers who are seeking information related to ethics and ethical behaviour in pharmaceutical companies.

To the best of my knowledge, this review of understanding ethical/unethical behaviour in pharmaceutical companies of the past 10 years between 2008-2017 has not been done to date. This study is filling the gap by bringing all the information about ethics in pharmaceutical companies at one place, which works as an index of ethics-related study in this specific pharmaceutical company context.