The news: A new report reviewed by STAT reveals that Pfizer and Eli Lilly pay their telehealth provider partners upwards of a few million dollars.

How we got here: Pharma companies are increasingly partnering with telehealth companies to give patients access to virtual care for certain conditions, while also driving prescriptions of their own branded products to treat those conditions.

A group of US senators recently expressed concern that Pfizer’s and Lilly’s websites create the impression that any patient interested in a particular medication can receive it with just a few clicks. The senators recently received answers to numerous questions they sent to telehealth companies about their business deals with Pfizer and Lilly.

Four key takeaways from the report’s findings, per STAT:

1. Pfizer and Lilly are paying their affiliated telehealth providers considerable money.

• One of Pfizer’s unnamed telehealth associates charges drugmakers between $510,000 and $2.45 million over a three-year contract term.
• Lilly pays less, but still a total of $942,500 over three years to three telehealth companies.
• Importantly, the telehealth providers noted they don’t get incentives or bonuses for writing more prescriptions. For context, anti-kickback laws in healthcare prohibit anyone from requesting or receiving anything of value in exchange for patient referrals.

2. 85% of consumers accessing care via Pfizer and 74% via Lilly left the appointment with an Rx.

• 100% of consumers who went to Lilly’s affiliated migraine telehealth provider, Cove, got a prescription.
• But not all of those prescriptions were the drugmakers’ branded products—some were generics, per the report.

3. Most consumers still aren’t using pharma’s D2C online platforms.

• Just 325 people accessed telehealth provider UpScript through Pfizer’s portal, PfizerForAll, in a five-month period last year.
• Lilly’s D2C business, LillyDirect, sent 3,759 people to Form Health, which prescribes weight loss drugs, in the same period. But Lilly routed far fewer to 9amHealth (620) and Cove (15).

4. The telehealth tie-ups can help drugmakers’ B2B sales efforts.

• UpScript alerts Pfizer which of its doctors wrote prescriptions.
• Pharma companies can use this data to target high-volume prescribers with marketing materials and clinical data on existing and new drugs.

Our take: Drugmakers in the D2C telehealth market likely won’t be too worried about the report’s findings. It will be difficult for regulators to prove that a pharma company’s payment to a telehealth partner is directly tied to prescription volume. And the report provides more evidence that many consumers self-diagnose and learn about medications before meeting with a doctor, which is another development that pharma will use to their advantage.

Drug brands will need to boost awareness of their D2C offerings to justify the price they pay telehealth firms, however. Marketers could tap into condition-specific online communities as well as the doctors they work with to learn more about patients who can’t get treatments through insurance and who might be good fits for pharma’s D2C programs.

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