ViiV healthcare is once again the highest ranked pharma group in terms of its reputation in the eyes of patients.
This is according to new research by PatientView, which surveyed 1,150 patient groups on the corporate reputation of 37 individual pharma companies (and of the pharma industry as a whole) in 2014.
The survey was conducted mid-November 2014 to mid-January 2015 and shows that ViiV Healthcare – a joint venture between GlaxoSmithKline (although it is selling its share), Pfizer and Japan’s Shionogi came out top.
It was ranked first for overall reputation, as well as for delivering patient-centricity, patient information, patient information and having useful products.
These were four of the six criteria for ranking the firms – the other two: transparency and integrity – were topped by the Danish diabetes firm Novo Nordisk and AbbVie respectively.
Because of this, the two firms were also ranked joint second overall, with Novartis fourth and Lundbeck an equal fifth with cancer specialist Roche.
Lundbeck jumps up the ranks
In fact Lundbeck has made the biggest jump in terms of its reputation as it was ranked a poor twenty-second in 2013.
After holding high positions in both 2011 (third place) and 2012 (first place), Lundbeck dramatically slumped in 2013 – almost certainly because patient groups reacted to the 2013 news that the company had been fined by the European Commission, according to commentary by PatientView. Yet, in just a year, Lundbeck has managed to move back up to fifth place in the 2014 rankings.
Other notable climbers include:
• Bayer – rose four places to seventeenth for patient-centeredness
• BMS – rose four places to twenty-second for patient safety
• GSK – rose six places to ninth for having a good record on patient safety
• MSD – rose three places to seventeenth for providing high-quality information to patients
• Sanofi – five places to thirteenth for having high-quality, useful products
• Teva – five places to sixteenth for having a good record on patient safety.
Gilead slides back down
But on the negative side, Gilead fell 12 places from its 2013 rank of second to fourteenth in 2014.
PatientView say that the respondent patient groups do “continue to acknowledge the value of Gilead’s products”, as they ranked the company second in 2014 in the indicator of corporate reputation.
The reason for its slide, according to its analysis, is the firm’s controversial pricing strategy for its new hepatitis C drugs Sovaldi (sofosbuvir) and Harvoni (ledipasvir and sofosbuvir), given the public criticism of the nearly $100,000 (£60,000) price tags for the two treatments.
Overall reputation climbs
The pharma industry in itself ranks a lowly sixth among the eight healthcare-industry sectors covered by the survey, with only not-for-profit and for-profit health insurers ranking lower.
Retail pharmacists came top of this list, with medical device companies and private healthcare service second and third respectively.
But it was not all bad news for pharma as the industry’s reputation actually went up: 39% of the 1,150 patient groups respondents said that pharma had either an ‘excellent’ or a ‘good’ corporate reputation last year.
In 2013 just 35.4% said the same, with a similar percentage also recorded in 2012. But this is still below the 2011 score, when 41% of respondents gave an ‘excellent’ or ‘good’ rating.