HOW CAN PHARMA COMPANIES HOW VALUE?
In today’s highly competitive healthcare market how can pharma companies stand out from the crowd? David Southern, Managing Director of market access specialists Spirit Access, explains why showing brand value has never been more important for pharma companies and provides insight as to how this might be achieved.
Communicating
the value of your device or product to a cash strapped NHS can mean the
difference between good and great performance.
The NHS is in trouble and we don’t need to look very far to find the
next worrying story.
“traditional
models of selling no longer
work”
The
way that pharma accesses the NHS is changing and traditional models of selling will will no longer work. It has never been more important for pharma to be able to demonstrate the real value of their offering.
You know that your product or device will help patients get better or achieve a better quality of life and you know that when patients are treated well it will save NHS resources. You may well have had a positive NICE or SMC review yet still, your NHS customers have difficulty in finding time to implement the changes that will help them realise the full benefits of your product or device.
“many stakeholders involved”
Decisions are no longer made by individual prescribers, now there are many stakeholders involved so it is harder to ensure that the key messages reach your audiences. The acquisition cost is still important, but it almost certainly does not represent the true value of your product or device.
“difficulty
finding time to implement
changes”
According to the Office
for National Statistics the NHS has a managerial workforce that is one-third
the size of that across the UK economy as a whole. NHS managers simply don’t have time to pick
through the vast amounts of data that are available, analyse it and explore the
impact of efficiencies. This presents an
opportunity for pharma companies to become integral to the commissioning
process, developing meaningful relationships with their customers supplying the
information the NHS needs to commission services.
“an
opportunity for pharma”
The
challenge for any supplier to the NHS is to show the true value of their
product or device in a way that can be readily understood and accepted by their
NHS customers. There are three key
elements you require to achieve this.
"First - a firm
grasp on the numbers"
How
many patients are there and how much do they cost? What are the most important issues facing
your customers? Is it the volume of
activity? Is it the length of stay? Is it the rate or readmissions or mortality
rate? Can this information be combined
with other data sets to give new insight and facilitate decision making?
"Second - understand the flow of patients – the patient pathway"
The
patient pathway is a record of a patient’s journey through the NHS. It establishes what resources are consumed,
in terms of time, human resources and physical resources (equipment and room
usage, costs, revenue etc.). A patient
pathway is not a clinical guideline which is an ideal treatment protocol based
on the best medical evidence, but a picture of reality. When commissioning a new service it is the
fine detail of the patient pathway that leads to success. If we truly understand the patient pathway
then we can identify the value points or those parts of the pathway that can be
changed or improved to create value for the patient, the NHS and the pharma
industry. It enables a pharma company to
consider the impact of their product not just at the point of intervention but
throughout the whole patient’s journey.
"Third - help the NHS implement the changes"
Each
of these elements are essential in delivering the full value of your product or
service for the benefit of patients, the NHS, and your organisation.
To
find out more about how we use this approach to help our pharma clients show
the value of their brands to their NHS customers, please contact us on
