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Pharma companies can benefit from tracking spending

Pharma Compliance Alert, November 14, 2007

Individual state laws that require pharmaceutical companies to track all the gifts they give physicians can actually prove beneficial to pharmaceutical companies, according to the members of a panel at last week's Pharmaceutical Regulatory and Compliance Congress, in Washington, DC.

The OIG recommends tracking all spending data in the aggregate instead of looking at what each individual state wants. Once that data is collected, pharmaceutical companies can look at their expenditures and decide whether to spend their money in that way.

Panelist Andy Bender of Polaris Management Partners said collecting all of the spending information may raise business questions, but that is one of the benefits of aggregate tracking.

By tracking aggregate spending, companies can determine what value an item, like a pen, will add to the interaction before they use it with a customer, according to Justin Dillon of Merck. He added companies will be able to look at their resources and decide whether they are comfortable with the things they are giving to physicians.

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