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What a difference
20 years makes…
OR DOES
IT REALLY?
By Caroline Pond.
One thing I know for sure is that 20 ABPI Code 2021: Clause 19 Prohibition on
years can fly by and when I think Inducements and Inappropriate Payments
about 2005 it doesn’t really seem and the Provision of Items to Health
that long ago. I mean it - it seems like Professionals and Other Relevant Decision
Makers
yesterday! Maybe that’s just my age… 19.1 (18.1) No gift, pecuniary advantage or
I do know though, that the supposed decline benefit may be supplied, offered or promised
in pharmacy margins started much longer ago to health professionals or to other relevant
than 2005 and I can remember back in the decision makers in connection with the
‘90s when I ran two community pharmacies, I promotion of medicines or as an inducement
was worrying about the direction of travel for to prescribe, supply, administer, recommend,
the industry then. Or is it that we always look buy or sell any medicine, subject to the
fondly back in time and not forwards? provisions of Clauses 10.4 and 19.2.
Much has changed, since I was a young I must confess, early in my career I was also
pharmacist, regarding all aspects of how once one of those reps with medicines, mugs,
things work from a business perspective clocks, pens and a charge account for lunches
within this sector. Again, I can hark back to my in the local ‘posh’ restaurant. It was just the
pharmacies and paying my mortgage on the way business was done and if you were on
generic rebate I received from a manufacturer. the receiving end of the ‘boot stock’ for your
Reps were our best friends, and they dispensary it brought in a nice extra margin for
encouraged us to pile branded stock high with the practice. The good old days…
free stock left as a thank you. However, the code is in place and for good
The ABPI Code of Practice for the reason and discounts do still exist as an
Pharmaceutical Industry put a stop to inducement to stock rather than to prescribe
incentivisation to prescribe, and no longer do so why does it feel so far from those halcyon
we have pharmaceutical company reps in days in 2005.
their beige Vauxhall Cavaliers with boots full
of stock to dish out to GPs interested in trying Well one thing I do know for sure is that
the product out on their patients. workload in the dispensary has increased.
With the emergence of more and more
sophisticated medicines and more patients
living longer with more long-term conditions.
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