- 5 October 2007
- Author: Onyx Health
- Posted in: New Influencers
- Tagged under:
All Change – The New Influencers
How many times have you heard someone tell you that the NHS is in turmoil? Lack of investment, not enough doctors, MSRA and insufficient funding for new treatments, are all things we hear on a daily basis. But there is one area where the NHS has achieved success. Over the years it has successfully managed to eradicate the influence of clinician led prescribing decisions. Clinicians still decide if a drug is suitable for a particular patient but whether that patient, ever gets the particular choice of drug is now made by a completely different set of influencers.
Of course the industry has known this for a while, so what I am saying is nothing new, yet so many pharma companies are still sitting back and continuing to use the traditional sales and marketing model that has served them well in the past. However, the NHS has changed – really it has. While pharma has been basking on its luxury yacht, the NHS oil tanker has been slowly manoeuvring off-course and is now going in a different direction. The traditional one-size- fits all approach to the NHS no longer works. Sales and marketing strategies need to be patient centric, flexible and adaptable to meet local needs. Companies need to fully understand the healthcare needs of each PCT and be able to show how their product and services can effectively meet these needs. PCB managers will want to talk to you if you can show how your product can improve health outcomes, achieve their targets and prevent a patient from being hospitalised.
At the moment much of the talk has been about decreasing sales force activity and certainly some industry commentators are claiming that the sales rep/GP relationship will soon be dead in the water. But what about other marketing disciplines? Should companies be offering PCB managers support with PR campaigns to educate their patients about disease management? The OFT report highlighted that annually £100m of drugs are returned unused, but if they used the 10% figure usually quoted by the DH then this amount increases to £800m. Offering a PCB manager a package that could include a compliance programme for patients with a particular drug, to help reduce waste and improve local health outcomes could be looked upon favourably in the commissioning process.
There have been many good pilot examples of how these different approaches could work but the difficulty companies are having is in maintaining and increasing sales, whilst scaling these projects up and cutting other activities. Achieving the right balance is the dilemma facing many companies. Lets be honest, it is quite a painful time for everyone involved in the pharma industry at the moment. We are all having to move out of our comfort zones, move into unchartered waters, learn new skills and adopt techniques that will influence prescribing of brands to enable us to catch up with the oil tanker.