This was a
question, posed in frustration last week by a lead clinician in a London
hospital to his NHS Trust bosses. It was in response to being told to save
£500K in the next 12 months or they would “find the savings for him”. In a
therapeutic area where treatment is a life or death issue, therapy is life-long,
and where the patient pool continues to grow in a short-staffed department,
this is a tall order.
Last week I
met with four lead clinicians across London. At each meeting I grew more
hesitant about asking the question “How are things going?” The response was
always the same: a tortured expression and then a torrent of frustration and
resignation about the continued financial squeeze and the renewed push towards
the new NHS. One clinician revealed that, in addition to a burgeoning workload, he was now
required to tender for his
department to continue to provide the specialist services that he and his NHS team
have been doing (rather well) for more than 10 years.
The next 18
months will be interesting, to say the least. As an observer, I wonder how
clinicians will deal with the diverse pressures that the Health and Social Care
Act will put upon them and their departments. As a member of the public, I look
on nervously as the responsibility for care transitions away from the
ultimately altruistic and benevolent NHS to the profit-driven, shorter-term
motivations of private companies. All this coupled with the government’s target
of saving £20 billion by 2015.
So where
does this leave the pharmaceutical industry? A big question…with many different
factors to consider: a tougher climate in which to make the case for new,
expensive drugs; a new approach to evaluate a drug and its worthiness for
reimbursement; and a more localised, needs-based formulary decision-making
pathway. Big challenges, which won’t be solved overnight.
But what
about the everyday challenge faced by brand teams in every pharma company: how
to grow your brand, demonstrate leadership in the category and build
relationships with healthcare providers in a sustainable way? Well, perhaps the
current situation offers the industry an opportunity.
Dr David
Pencheon, Director of the NHS
sustainable development unit, doesn’t beat around the bush: “When will
the pharmaceutical industry stop making chemicals and start managing the health
of communities?... The only game in healthcare reform is integration, and if
pharma wants to play its part it has to join together with the health service
rather than just provide the pills… When I take over as an NHS commissioner,
I’ll contract whichever drug company wins the tender to provide a total
diabetes service for 50,000 patients.”
The NHS needs help, and the pharmaceutical industry is well-placed to
provide that help and meet their own objectives in the process. The long-term
outcome will be a stronger and more trusting relationship between drug
companies and healthcare providers. There is now an opportunity to really
demonstrate that industry can do the right thing, and do things right.
At Mash, we’ve just finished working on one such project: a training
programme aimed at increasing testing and diagnosis of a long-term condition.
In industry-speak, a market expansion programme; from the clinician’s point of
view it is a much-needed resource, which helps them deliver training to their
colleagues that has been on their to-do list for months. From a public health
perspective, it improves outcomes and reduces the overall cost of caring for
people living with the condition. Since its pilot in October in a large centre
in London, it has been taken up by over 30 other centres across the UK; in one
centre it has increased testing by junior doctors by 60% and shifted earlier
diagnosis by 13%. And all this on a relatively modest budget (let’s not forget
that pharma companies too are experiencing some significant belt-tightening
measures at the moment). It is gratifying for us to see such a positive and
instantaneous uptake of this programme and for our client, it delivers against
their objectives.
So how did we do it, and how can this be applied to other brand
challenges? And in this time of economic strain for all parties, how can it be
delivered efficiently?
1 - Listen. Really
listen. Don’t just run an advisory board and diligently take notes for 7 hours;
go out and visit clinicians, in their departments. See where they work and what
they are faced with every day. Let them tell you about their world. And if
you’re developing a training resource, pay attention to what it is that’s
stopping people from doing what they need to be doing more of; really work hard
to unpick the barriers. If you understand their day-to-day challenges you’ll be
much better equipped to deliver something of real value.
2 - Collaborate.
Don’t just create something and present it
fait accomplis to your audience; involve those who are going to deliver,
and be the recipients of, your resource. Not only does it mean that you don’t
risk losing resonance and relevance during the development process, it also
means you have a ready-made promotional vehicle once it’s finished – and the
vehicle is a whole lot more credible than some of the alternatives. In our
project this meant taking on board feedback about the importance of language
and phraseology in our messaging and paring down what we’d previously thought
to be key content. To succeed, you really need to be prepared to sacrifice, and
you need to be humble. Your collaborators are the experts.
3- Motivate. This is the easy bit. If you’ve done the
first two parts right, the third will come naturally. Your project will already
have engaged stakeholders and people prepared to talk about it – they’ll want
to shout it from the rooftops. In our case study, this meant a collaborator was
prepared to present the oral presentation on the project at an international
and national conference, and then offered to be involved in taking the project
to the next stage, with a different audience. When you talk about your project
to other people in the field, your methodology for developing it will naturally
spark their curiosity and encourage them to be involved.
We’re not
going to change the world overnight, but by genuinely collaborating with
clinicians and by listening to their everyday challenges, we can work with them
in small but significant ways to help make their lives easier, improve patient
outcomes, and bring credibility and trust into healthcare–pharma relationships.
View
Louisa’s LinkedIn profile: http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/louisa-bassant/13/a70/409
Follow Mash Health on Twitter: @mashhealth
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