Decision of OGYÉI regarding pharmaceutical commercial practice
2021. February 9.In February 2021 OGYÉI published a new decision in which it imposed a penalty of HUF 34 million on a pharmaceutical company.
Infringements of the Company
The Company provided health care professionals with information materials containing inaccurate claims not proven by literature and being in contradiction with the statements made in the summary of product characteristics.
The Company concluded contracts for lecturing of marketing materials related to its product, and for expert activities. It concluded contracts with health care professionals entitled to prescribe medicines, whose subject matter was to write an own case related to the Company’s medicine in the Company’s promotional brochure for the promotion of the acquisition, sales and consumption of the medicine.
By avoiding physicians and the chief pharmacist employed by the in-patient health care service provider the Company handed over medicine samples and donated medicines directly to hospital departments and other organisational units.
In the frames of contractual legal relationship, within the scope of its commercial practices, the Company provided prohibited financial advantages to health care professionals. It provided health care professionals with gifts that were not interrelated with the health care activity of persons entitled to prescribe and distribute medicines and therapeutic medical devices. The Company provided health care professionals entitled to prescribe medicinal products/medical aids with hospitality that qualifies hospitality outside the frames of a professional-scientific event. In the case of a company event, it exceeded the limit of hospitality and provided health care professionals with hospitality in excess of that.
Reporting obligation
The Company failed to report professional events organised by it and failed to complete attendance list. It did not furnish OGYÉI with deeds certifying its compliance with payment obligations after medical sales representatives.