The new policy also will stop the use of individual sales targets and instead pay its salespeople on the basis of technical knowledge, quality of service and overall business performance, GSK said Tuesday. The plan will be rolled out over the next year and is expected to be in place by early 2015.
At the same time, the company will begin a two-year process to change the way it works with doctors and other healthcare professionals. It will end the "practice of paying them to speak on its behalf, about its products or disease areas, to audiences who can prescribe or influence prescribing."
The U.K.-based big pharma's actions come after the company has received criticism and run into legal troubles for aggressive marketing tactics. An investigation is ongoing in China, where GSK has been accused of bribing travel agencies to boost drug sales.
The company in 2012 reached a $3 billion settlement with the U.S. government over charges that it marketed some drugs off-label, to treat medical conditions for which they had not received approval by the Food and Drug Administration.
GSK chairman Andrew Witty insists the latest change in sales incentives is not related to the Chinese bribery scandal or off-label charges, but that it is another step in the company's attempts to make its actions transparent.
"We recognize that we have an important role to play in providing doctors with information about our medicines, but this must be done clearly, transparently and without any perception of conflict of interest," Witty said in a same-day statement.
The changes are unlikely to make a difference in smaller companies' choice of GSK as a collaboration partner; observers expect other pharmaceutical companies to take steps in the same direction as the industry has faced scrutiny in recent years.
GSK already took a similar tack with its U.S. sales operations in 2011, using a program it called "Patient First."
PhRMA, the U.S. pharmaceutical trade group, changed its code of conduct in 2009 to require stricter limits on the use of physicians as marketing tools. AstraZeneca plc made a decision along those lines as well in 2011.
Under the Physician Payment Sunshine Act, contained within the Affordable Care Act, pharma companies must develop a transparency program, which the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services calls "Open Payments." Drug makers must report to CMS any payments or other transfers of value to physicians and teaching hospitals. The data are collected annually and published on a public website. The collection began in August.
In a related matter, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday let stay a lower court ruling in the case of Scott Harkonen, former CEO of InterMune Inc. Harkonen had been convicted of wire fraud by misrepresenting the results of a clinical trial for the drug Actimmune to shareholders. Harkonen had appealed citing free speech, but now his earlier conviction stands. As a result, he cannot work for any company that bills Medicare. InterMune also ended up paying $36 million to settle Justice Department allegations of off-label marketing in the incident.
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