AntiCor: Lack of clear rules between doctors and pharmaceutical  companies creates corruption risks in healthcare system

ArmInfo. The lack of clear rules for interaction between doctors and pharmaceutical companies creates corruption risks in the healthcare system, as noted in a statement issued by the AntiCor initiative and received by ArmInfo.

The initiative emphasized that the main issue lies not so much in the  cooperation itself, but in its form and the influence of hidden  incentives on physician behavior. The initiative noted that  pharmaceutical companies competing in the market often use "soft  influence" tools: funding conferences and trainings, consulting  contracts, grants, trips, gifts, or bonuses. "Formally, this may be  presented as support for professional development, but in practice,  in many cases, an informal mutual expectation develops: doctors must  favor drugs from one company or another. This is where the risk of  corruption arises: the object of exchange is no longer knowledge, but  the direction of prescription," noted AntiCor.

The initiative noted that this phenomenon has several systemic  consequences, one of which is related to the distortion of clinical  decisions. As AntiCor explained, doctors, consciously or not, begin  to choose drugs in which they have a financial or other interest,  resulting in evidence-based medicine gradually giving way to market  influence. "Secondly, the risk of overprescribing increases. With an  incentive to prescribe more medications, the use of unnecessary drugs  or additional treatments increases. This is especially dangerous in  pediatrics, endocrinology, and the treatment of chronic diseases,  where therapy is long-term. It also leads to the artificial promotion  of expensive drugs, as pharmaceutical companies increasingly push  highly profitable drugs, which in turn leads to increased healthcare  costs for both the patient and the insurance system. Thus, the  incentive for corruption also becomes a source of financial burden,"  the statement explains.

Furthermore, according to the source, this leads to a distortion of  competition, resulting in market advantage not being given to the  most effective or safe drugs, but to companies with greater resources  to influence doctors, which in the long term distorts the structure  of the entire pharmaceutical market. AntiCor also noted the risk of a  systemic crisis of trust. "A patient who doubts the impartiality of  prescriptions loses trust in the doctor and the healthcare system as  a whole. This is not only an ethical issue, but also a public health  problem, since it reduces patient adherence to treatment. These risks  are especially pressing in an environment of low physician salaries,  weak mechanisms for declaring conflicts of interest, and insufficient  oversight. Under such conditions, 'rewards' offered by pharmaceutical  companies become not an exception, but part of systemic behavior,"  the initiative noted.

AntiCor also noted that the introduction of universal health  insurance could only exacerbate these risks if it isn't accompanied  by clear monitoring. As the initiative noted, when every prescribed  drug is reimbursed, it creates a financial flow that can be exploited  for profit through targeted drug prescriptions.  "In this case, the  insurance system effectively begins to finance suboptimal and  sometimes unnecessary treatment. The conclusion is clear: the problem  isn't individual, but systemic. If clear rules for interaction  between doctors and pharmaceutical companies aren't established,  conflicts of interest aren't disclosed, and opaque incentive  mechanisms aren't curbed, corruption risks will continue to grow,  impacting both the quality of treatment and the sustainability of the  healthcare system," AntiKor concluded.