Patient Services Offer Competitive Advantage For Pharma

By Gail Dutton, Contributing Writer
Follow Me On Twitter @GailLdutton

According to “The Patient is IN: Pharma’s Growing Opportunity in Patient Services,” a recent Accenture survey of 200 patient services executives in the U.S. and Europe, 9 of the 10 most common patient services deliver above-average business impact. Knowing that, 85 percent of those surveyed say they plan to increase their support for patient services during the next 18 months boosting the number of services offered from an average of 8.8 to 13.6.

Improving Patient Outcome Is The Main Driver

The reason for the increase, according to 67 percent of patient services representatives, is to improve patient outcomes. Other leading reasons include improving relationships with healthcare professionals, enhancing patient satisfaction, and supporting their corporate brand strategy objectives.

Accenture reports the top three services pharmaceutical companies plan to introduce during the next two years are:

• benefit coverage and access support,
• health counselors,
• adherence management programs.

While valuable, those aren’t the highest priority for patients. A previous Accenture survey indicates patients are most interested in:

• medication delivery and support,
• remote patient monitoring,
• prescription adherence programs.

Current Efforts Are Ineffective

Historically, pharmaceutical companies have relied upon healthcare professionals and providers to make patients aware of their services. Patients, however, haven’t gotten the message.

Specifically, 81 percent of respondents rely upon physicians and 72 percent use medical facilities to inform patients about available programs. Yet, only 19 percent of patients are aware of pharmaceutical company services that could help them. To remedy this disconnect, 66 percent of the pharmaceutical companies surveyed say they plan to communicate directly with patients, in addition to healthcare professionals.

Social media, online communications, and web pages will lead the digital push and, in the U.S., television will continue to be a key medium. These patient engagement strategies will be supported by patient management technology (53 percent) and the deployment of smart devices (41 percent).

Digital Patient Engagement Strategies Emerge

For these efforts to actually improve business value and patient outcomes, pharmaceutical companies must do more to add services and increase patient awareness. They must also clarify responsibility for these programs within their own companies.

Currently, 73 percent of respondents say no single function within their company is responsible for patient services. Instead, responsibility is spread across an average of 2.5 teams. This lack of ownership contributes to patients’ lack of awareness about available programs.

Companies also are stymied by the lack of precise measurement. Currently, the most common metrics companies gather are patient satisfaction (66 percent), healthcare professional satisfaction (61 percent), and the effect on brand or business objectives (57 percent). The effect of these programs on patient outcomes is measured only 43 percent of the time.

To gather more meaningful metrics, 56 percent of respondents plan to incorporate tracking technology, metrics reporting, and data analytics into their patient services strategies.

Pharmaceutical companies are beginning to understand the correlation between patient services, patient outcomes, and business value. Within the next 18 months, they also are planning to act on that understanding by increasing the number of patient services, making patients aware of those services — and most importantly — tracking the results of those services