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* GSK scrapping doctor payments for speaking engagements
* Ending sales reps' targets globally following U.S. move
* Comes amid criticism of aggressive industry sales tactics
* Move may pressure other drug companies to follow suit
By Ben Hirschler
LONDON, Dec 17 (Reuters) - GlaxoSmithKline will stop payingdoctors for promoting its drugs and scrap prescription targetsfor its marketing staff - a first for an industry battlingscandals over its sales practices, and a challenge for its peersto follow suit.
Britain's biggest drugmaker also said on Tuesday it wouldstop payments to healthcare professionals for attending medicalconferences as it tries to persuade critics it is addressingconflicts of interest that could put commercial interests aheadof the best outcome for patients.
The move may force other companies to act, since the entiredrugs industry has been under fire for aggressive marketingtactics in recent years.
"Where GSK leads we must hope that other companies willfollow," Fiona Godlee, editor of the British Medical Journal andan influential campaigner against undue industry influence inmedical practice, told Reuters.
"But there is a long way to go if we are to truly toextricate medicine from commercial influence. Doctors and theirsocieties have been too ready to compromise themselves."
GlaxoSmithKline's move comes amid a major briberyinvestigation in China, where police have accused it offunnelling up to 3 billion yuan ($494 million) to travelagencies to facilitate bribes to boost its drug sales.
However, the company said the measures were not directlyrelated to its Chinese problems and were rather part of a broadeffort to improve transparency.
In the United States, the industry's biggest market by far,many companies have run into conflicts over improper salestactics and GSK reached a record $3-billion settlement with theU.S. government last year over charges that it providedmisleading information on certain drugs.
A number of other firms have taken some steps to clean uptheir marketing practices and companies are being forced todisclose payments to doctors under U.S. healthcare law.
Similar laws requiring firms to make public the names ofdoctors they have paid will take effect in Europe from the startof 2016.
"This will undoubtedly change behaviour and trigger are-think of how some forms of continuing medical education areorganised and funded," said Richard Bergstrom, director generalof the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries andAssociations.
Shares in GSK, hit in recent months by its woes in China anda resulting fall in sales, slid 1.4 percent against a 0.3percent dip on London's blue-chip FTSE index.
Colin McLean, managing director at SVM Asset Management, whoholds shares in drugmakers including Pfizer but not GSK,said he would welcome other firms following GSK's lead.
"Given the problems Glaxo had in China, it is important forinvestors to understand, at a deeper level, just how incentiveswork through an organisation," he said.
SELF REGULATION
AstraZeneca said in 2011 it was scrapping paymentsfor doctors to attend international congresses but others, untilnow, have not followed suit and GSK's actions go further.
An AstraZeneca spokeswoman said on Tuesday it had tightenedup practices in 2011 so that its actions could not be seen as aninducement for doctors to prescribe its products.
Officials at other major drug companies were not immediatelyavailable to comment.
Tim Reed, head of Health Action International, anAmsterdam-based non-government organisation critical of BigPharma, said the GSK move would increase the pressure on othercompanies.
"I think other companies will follow suit - but one of thebiggest problems is that the industry persists in regulatingitself," he said. "The only way to properly control promotion isstrong and enforced regulation by the state."
GSK's Chief Executive Andrew Witty said in a statement thathis company's actions were designed to ensure that patients'interests always came first.
"We recognise that we have an important role to play inproviding doctors with information about our medicines, but thismust be done clearly, transparently and without any perceptionof conflict of interest," he said.
The decision to stop payments to doctors for speaking aboutmedicines during meetings with other prescribers marks a bigshift for a global industry that has always relied heavily onthe influence of experts in promoting products.
GSK said it aimed to implement this move and a relatedmeasure to end paying for doctors to attend medical conferencesby the start of 2016.
The company currently spends some 50 million pounds ($82million) a year on paying doctors to speak or attendconferences, according to estimates from industry sources.
U.S. MODEL
The change in payments to GSK's sales representatives willbe implemented faster, following a successful test-run in theUnited States, where payments have been decoupled from thenumber of prescriptions generated since 2011.
The policy of ending individual sales targets will now berolled out globally. GSK said it planned to implement the newcompensation system in all countries by early 2015.
Its U.S. 'Patient First' programme bases pay for commercialstaff on a mix of qualitative measures and the overall businessperformance, rather than the number of prescriptions generated.
The shift is pragmatic to a certain extent, since manydecisions about which drugs to use are now taken centrally bybig insurers and governments, based on cost-effectivenessmeasurements, rather than by individual doctors.
Vivienne Nathanson, head of science and ethics at theBritish Medical Association, said the approach made sense forpatient care.
"It is pleasing to see a large pharmaceutical company likeGlaxoSmithKline recognise that it can reduce the possibility ofundue influence by rewarding employees for providinghigh-quality information and education for doctors rather thanfor their sales figures," she said.
GSK will still pay fees to doctors carrying outcompany-sponsored clinical research, advisory activities andmarket research, which it said were essential in providinginsights on specific diseases.
