Big Pharma’s reputation among patient groups tumbled in 2012 with only 34 percent of participants in an annual survey saying multinational firms had an excellent or good reputation compared to 43 percent a year ago.

London-based PatientView’s 2012 annual survey of the corporate reputation of pharma, biotech and the healthcare industry found the industry took a drubbing for a lack of fair pricing policies, lack of transparency in all corporate activities, and poor management of adverse news about products. The industry was ranked seventh overall out of eight healthcare sectors. Only for-profit health insurers scored worse at 24 percent, unchanged from a year ago.

Retail pharmacists boasted the highest score at 62 percent—the same as in 2011—and the medical devices (50 percent) and the biotech industry (44 percent) both bested Big Pharma.

The survey queried 600 international, national, regional, and local patient groups in 56 countries between November and December of 2012. Six indicators of corporate character were ranked. For the pharmaceutical industry, groups scored 29 companies on whether they have an effective patient-centered strategy, the quality of information the company provides to patients, the company’s record on patient safety, the usefulness to patients of the company’s products, whether the company acts with integrity, and the company’s record of transparency with external stakeholders.

Lundbeck, Gilead Sciences, Novartis, Janssen, and Pfizer were the top scoring companies.

PatientView noted that pharmaceutical companies are trying to build new relationships with patients groups and portray themselves as being patient-centric. Nevertheless, patient groups aren’t buying it. “I have never met one among several thousand patient contacts who felt that pharma companies have patient-orientated strategies,” one U.K.-based national patient group noted in the 2012 survey.

“The fundamental flaw,” says PatientView, “seems to be that companies remain overly product-focused in any dealings with patient groups, and still do not truly see the world from a patient perspective.”