Novartis and Hooters

I've been keeping up on the US Justice Department's suit against Novartis for its alleged violations of the Anti-Kickback Statute from 2002-2011. Novartis allegedly hosted educational events--events hosted by drug companies, usually at a restaurant or the like, where certain doctors or Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) are supposedly paid a fair market value for their time to speak about the data-based merits of the company's drugs. This is common acceptable practice within the industry. These types of events generate extremely high return on investment as doctors who are paid to attend these events will in turn increase the number of prescriptions they write for the company's drugs.

The difference in this case is that there was little evidence that any credible scientific data were shared as some of these events occurred on fishing trips off the Florida coast or at Hooters with no slide decks. Novartis' mistake was not in paying off the doctors, but in paying them off without the formality of a slide deck. Had the sales reps simply reported the use of a Powerpoint presentation, there would be no issue. So perhaps the real crime here is in the reps' inattentive record keeping.

Of course, Novartis is just doing what everybody else in the industry is doing to be competitive. Altogether, in the past 10 years, pharmas have paid more than $11 billion for their marketing tactics; they say "data" and "educational programs", Justice department says "false claims" and "kickbacks".