May8

Is It “Health Insurance,” or Merely Prepaid Health Care?

Posted by Stephen Lubiak from OCH Payer Marketing- NJ, North America

By Stephen Lubiak from OCH Payer Marketing- NJ, North America | Published: May 8, 2013

PillThe Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) goal is to provide health insurance coverage to those without it now, and it uses 2 main mechanisms to do so. It penalizes individuals without insurance, thereby encouraging them to sign up for health insurance. (In order to support this effort, the law creates state insurance exchanges to offer health plans to consumers.) The law also penalizes employers (with 50 or more employees) that do not offer health insurance to their workers. So, these employers will either need to add insurance if they don’t currently offer it, or maintain or modify what they now offer to their employees…or else pay a fine.

As the ACA proceeds to full implementation, it’s probably polite to say that various “inconsistencies” in the law are emerging. While “self-pay” employers may still exercise some degree of freedom in adding, maintaining, or modifying their health insurance offerings, the law is determining many of the characteristics of health insurance offered to the public via health care exchanges.

It’s interesting to note that 2 key requirements of the law undermine the basics of insurance, which is defined simply as “coverage by contract whereby one party undertakes to indemnify or guarantee another against loss by a specified contingency or peril.”

The first requirement is that all beneficiaries pay essentially identical rates, regardless of their risk factors. One of the few recognitions of varied risk among the population, an individual’s age, is still subject to constraint (older people cannot be charged more than 3 times the premiums charged to younger people). The other requirement is that insurance companies should ignore individuals’ preexisting conditions when writing new policies. While this rule is popular—no one wants to deny health insurance coverage to a cancer survivor—it also could encourage people to wait until they are sick before they purchase insurance.

Additionally, the law’s definition of an insurance plan’s “essential health benefits” may also contribute to an unintended result: a small set of insurance offerings on health care exchanges that are all generally very expensive, due to the fact that the policies are required to cover many things. One possible effect on consumers is that they will pay higher premiums.

Let’s go back to employers. Year-over-year health care cost increases have recently moderated, but over the long term they have traditionally been higher than the rate of overall consumer inflation. Some employers may use the soon-to-be-created state exchanges as an opportunity to withdraw the health insurance they offer to their employees. Employers who still plan to offer health insurance will continue to scrutinize costs and seek ways to mitigate their increases. They may continue to restrict the breadth of offerings in their health plans (a trend that is opposite to the expansion of essential health benefits above). Another mechanism that works is to shift more costs to their employees in the form of higher premiums, copays, coinsurance and deductibles.

So, in the 2 areas that the ACA seeks to create new health insurance opportunities (state-based exchanges and newly regulated employer markets), the individual will most likely pay a greater share of costs and have a greater responsibility to evaluate his insurance policy as well as the health care interventions he receives.

What does this mean for marketing communications?

One question facing employers, employees, payers and consumers will be the role and importance of deductibles, copays, and coinsurance. These patient payments are essentially behavioral-change tools, encouraging the patient to “shop wisely” because he is spending his own money on health care. Will these mechanisms continue to work as they have in the past? It may depend on which segment of the market grows larger: the state-based exchanges or the employer-provided plans.

On the one hand, if the law is encouraging fewer, similar insurance offerings on state exchanges, it will hardly be easy for insurance companies to differentiate one policy from another. If the offerings from health plans become expensive and undifferentiated, with most of their benefits “prepaid” by premiums, how much impact will deductibles, copays, and coinsurance have? Would this also complicate manufacturers’ efforts to differentiate their products to insurers, providers, and patients/members?

On the other hand, if employers are restricting benefits in their heath plans and shifting more and more costs to employees, employees will be using more of their funds to pay for premiums, and there may be less left for deductibles, copays, and coinsurance. With fewer health care dollars available, the employee may respond more to the cost effects of those patient payments.

Readers, what will be the health plan implications for related drug and device issues such as tier placement, contracting terms, and pricing? What marketing efforts are still needed? And to whom should they be directed?

Source:

  1. Merriam-Webster. Definition of “insurance.” http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/insurance. Accessed April 22, 2013.

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Feb1

The Unintended Consequences of Personalized Medicine

Posted by Ashley George from Ogilvy Healthworld Payer Marketing - Parsippany, NJ

By Ashley George from Ogilvy Healthworld Payer Marketing - Parsippany, NJ | Published: February 1, 2013

Personalized-MedicineInnovative technological and scientific advancements in oncology have enabled scientists to unravel the biological complexity of more than 200 diseases commonly called cancer, and reexamine how these diseases should be classified, diagnosed, and treated.

Understanding how these diseases work and the applying of these insights to clinical practice have formed the foundation of personalized medicine, defined as the tailoring of drugs and other treatments to specific populations, based on their genetic profiles or other differentiating factors.

This concept provides a potential future in which prevention and treatment strategies will be individualized based on the molecular makeup of a patient and their disease, dramatically improving chances for better patient outcomes and reduced healthcare costs.

Those advancements may provide opportunities, but they also may pose potential unintended consequences to the healthcare system.

The aging American population, combined with an additional 32 million covered lives under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and overall increased survivorship in patients have created new challenges surrounding affordability and accessibility to healthcare.

Increased pressure for greater clinical and economic advancements creates imbalance among innovation, quality, and cost. In addition, ACA requirements impose more disparity by requiring improved quality of care, greater transparency in reimbursement coverage, and performance-based payments.

Payers and providers who are responsible for the implementation and adoption of personalized medicine are challenged to navigate the new environment as they are the major stakeholders.

Full implementation of personalized medicine may create new challenges for stakeholders and their patients, such as:

  • More stringent regulatory framework requiring greater transparency and tighter reimbursement controls for costly diagnostic technologies
  • Loss of patients’ ability to make their own healthcare decisions
    • In an effort to optimize clinical outcomes and minimize costs, some current therapies are aligned with patients’ biomarkers in order to ensure therapies are targeted to a specific genotype mutation. A prime example of this can be seen in patients with advanced stage melanoma who have approximately a 3-month survival rate. There are two treatment options: one with a companion diagnostic test (personalized) and one without (non-personalized). Because the personalized therapy has a companion diagnostic test that specifically identifies appropriate patients, payers and providers may be influenced toward this therapy over the non-personalized in order to maximize therapeutic outcomes. However, this creates a potential unintended consequence involving the non-personalized treatment option, which demonstrates efficacy in approximately 20% of patients and can extend survivorship up to 3 years. Therefore, these patients may be denied potentially 33 months of extended life.

In an attempt to improve the overall healthcare system by managing costs through personalized, tailored treatments, new barriers are created that can directly impact patient outcomes and limit the personal choice of available healthcare options.

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Oct16

How Social Media Turned User Experience Upside Down

Posted by Robert Egert from OCH Interactive Marketing - Parsippany, North America

By Robert Egert from OCH Interactive Marketing - Parsippany, North America | Published: October 16, 2012

In the early days of the Internet, the web was essentially a collection of pages connected by links. The Internet user experience was called browsing for a reason: We’d jump from page to page in a haphazard way with little connection between each site. Our selection of where to go might have started with a web search on Yahoo, Lycos or Ask Jeeves, but afterwards our path was probably based on whatever links we were presented with. The browsing experience was unpredictable, full of surprises and often felt like a kaleidoscope. It was also a pretty flat experience because most websites were pretty flat: words on a page, perhaps with some images and a spinning leprechaun gif thrown in for good measure.

What’s important about this structure from a user experience perspective is that the user was in the driver’s seat, moving from one static page to the next. No web page was ever more than one click away from any other and—structurally at least—all pages were equal.

Fast-forward to the Internet of today, and the landscape has truly inverted this relationship between users and content. Rather than jumping from page to page, today’s user experience is more like a funnel that is persistently tilted towards us. All information seems to runs downhill into our browsers and devices. Information and services are curated, collected and aggregated on our behalf and delivered to us.

This means we spend less time exploring and more time consuming material that’s already been prescreened. And when it comes to news, we’ve become dependent on programs to bring events to us. We stand still on our own island and the world spins around us. Of course, what the Internet brings us is highly personal. Much of the selection is driven by our personal social connections: our Facebook friends, LinkedIn connections, whom we follow on Twitter, etc.

The web experience of today cannot be separated from the interrelated concepts of personalization and aggregation. Information, events, news and resources are selected based on our unique personal connections and then aggregated into a few convenient outlets for us to consume.

This phenomenon may have begun with social media networks (and in fact it couldn’t exist without them) but the changes wrought by personalization and aggregation are larger than the social networks themselves. It has profoundly altered the way we access and consume news and information. And has created a new means for us to evaluate and interact with content—whether we consider it credible and actionable, and whether we wish to share it, comment on it or republish it. Years ago we relied on the professional editorial staff at large media companies to determine what was newsworthy. Today we rely on our socially connected friends. Personalization and aggregation determine whether we will see a movie, buy a recording, go to a party, see an art exhibit or contribute to a charity. It even determines whether we are aware of these things in the first place.

From a user experience perspective, there are some key implications that need to be considered when developing websites and related interactive initiatives:

Navigation Is Only Half the Story

While it’s always a good idea to have a well-thought-out navigational system with a clear taxonomy, navigation is arguably less important than it has ever been. This is because users are increasingly relying on shared links such as those found on their social networks. They are either deep-linking directly to your content or viewing it in an isolated instance that’s created on the fly for their consumption.

Personalization With No Strings Attached

In order to personalize a site experience, it used to be necessary to put your user through a registration process. This is no longer the case. Users can now sign in to sites using their social credentials. APIs and OAuth, a widely used open-source protocol, allows users to identify themselves using their Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other accounts without surrendering any personal information. For example, sites using OAuth can (with their users’ explicit permission) access profile data and friends’ activities and integrate that into the site experience. Using techniques like this, sites can display the names of your friends currently online, list what articles or topics they’ve liked or shared—all without capturing any personal information.

Context Is King

Because content is being aggregated and displayed outside of its original context, your assets may look and behave very differently depending on the setting and the device that your audience is using to access it. For example, let’s say you are developing a physician locator application. When accessing the application on a mobile device, it is possible to display the nearest physician based on the GPS that comes with the phone or tablet. On a desktop computer, users may need to input their location manually to get the same result. The implication is that we need to build flexibly so we can optimize the user experience based on the device and location.

Device Matters

The proliferation of devices has fragmented into a bewildering array of operating systems and screen sizes. Adding to the complexity, some devices accept input from mouse and keyboard while others respond to complex hand gestures or voice commands. Personalization and aggregation means that we need to think not only about where our content may travel but also on what kind of device and screen it will be displayed. Because new devices are constantly being released and operating systems are updated frequently, it can be an impossible task to accommodate all of them. For this reason it is a good idea to establish a list of what devices and operating systems you intend on supporting. While this list may need to change on a regular basis, it will give you a starting point for design and development.

 

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Sep4

Does the Bell Toll for Traditional Siloed Promotional Activities in a Leaner Compliance-Driven Pharma World?

Posted by Tracey Wood from Ogilvy Healthworld Medical Education - London, EMEA

By Tracey Wood from Ogilvy Healthworld Medical Education - London, EMEA | Published: September 4, 2012

Our clients are saying that the role of Medical Education will grow in years to come…potentially biting into other traditional areas of the marketing mix. Does this spell disaster for advertising or PR?

Ogilvy Healthworld Medical Education recently surveyed its clients to assess what the future would hold for Med Ed, and the results were both thought-provoking and intriguing. The clients we involved spanned marketing and medical affairs disciplines, in global, national and EMEA roles across a range of small, medium and large pharma companies.

Looking at how agencies would need to respond to changes and turbulence in the pharma environment, five key trends emerged:

  1. We are part of a shifting landscape: attitudes, budgets and people are moving away from Sales and Marketing to Medical Affairs and Market Access. This parallels an increase in educational activities and the slow erosion of PR and promotional activities or their metamorphosis into more educational content. Our clients are telling us: “Clinical data will increasingly be at the heart of educational tools and messages ….medical education will drive a more clinically focused brand strategy and what promotional work that remains will be subject to stricter and stricter regulations.”
  2. Our pharma clients are increasingly concerned about the risk of non-compliance and, in particular, inadvertent off- license promotion. As well as a sharper delineation between promotional versus non-promotional activities, there will be a drive to improve transparency between pharma companies, healthcare practitioners, payers and patients.
  3. The hands-off approach to pharma-sponsored Continuing Medical Education (CME) is becoming a double-edged sword: although companies have reduced regulatory control, they are under increased pressure—and face stiff penalties—if content is non-compliant.
  4. As healthcare professionals communicate increasingly in the virtual space, there will be less reliance solely on face-to-face communication. Digital communications will rise to deliver more cost-effective, innovative  solutions to more targeted audiences and enhance the value of face-to-face communications.
  5. As client teams continue to downsize, there will be a growing need for strategic communications planning expertise within agencies. Potentially, those with the greatest capability to become long-term strategic partners will increasingly be seconded in as interim managers: “As pharma becomes more risk averse and cost conscious, clients will need agencies who can lighten their load, in the new leaner, compliance-driven pharma world.”

In the relentless drive to rationalize healthcare spend and tailor therapies to meet unmet needs in increasingly segmented patient groups, new drugs will hit increasing scrutiny.   In this new world, data will be king—and Med Ed is ideally and uniquely equipped to use this information to justify premium pricing over cheaper, established medicines. Ultimately, pharma’s quest for improved transparency, trust and reputation must be underpinned by programs that lead to enduring change, but which are compliant in the stringent regulatory environment in which we operate. Medical education is not just about knowledge acquisition anymore. It must facilitate and drive behavioral change, among a range a stakeholder groups operating under strict regulatory compliance. While behavioral change is most effectively achieved when all communications disciplines are harnessed, including PR, advertising and market access, it will increasingly be underpinned by robust Med Ed.

Does the bell toll for traditional siloed promotional activities in a leaner compliance-driven pharma world?

 

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Aug30

A Common Goal for Clinical Trial Participants

Posted by Marie Emms from Fast4wD Ogilvy - NY, North America

By Marie Emms from Fast4wD Ogilvy - NY, North America | Published: August 30, 2012

The Olympics opening and closing ceremonies allowed us to reflect upon and appreciate the diverse world we live in. Watching the procession of athletes was proof to us all that Olympians come from all corners of the world, in very many different shapes and sizes!

The same can also be said for clinical trial participants.

By their nature, global clinical trials can be considered an oxymoron. From a patient perspective, their participation in a clinical trial is a very personal decision. Many patients choose to enroll in a clinical trial for access to a medication that might give them a few more weeks or months to live, or the possibility of improved quality of life. Other patients may choose to participate as they want future generations to have the opportunity to live life to the fullest, something that might have eluded them. The list can go on.

As an agency when we look at patient participation, we need to remember that the probability of two patients on the same study knowing each other is very slim, so there will never be the coming together of a group of likeminded individuals on a given clinical trial. Likewise, we want to avoid the possibility of patients discussing their study experiences for fear of un-blinding themselves, but we want them to embrace the fact that they are not alone.

There are many different tactics we can use to bring a sense of community, or belonging, to patients in clinical trials. The biggest hurdle to overcome is creating a program that can be inclusive to all patients. Of course, the answer here is that a) that’s impossible, and b) that’s not a smart solution.

Thinking back to the Olympic athlete procession, the mix of cultures and values on show reflected the diversity of a group, but together with a common goal, to win gold.

In clinical trials, we want patients to have that same sense of a common goal, of purpose. However, the way we share that message is very different. For some patients, they just require clear instruction from their study team and feel confident that they know their commitment to the study. For others, they want to receive regular bites of information, telling them how many patients have been recruited, which countries are taking part, etc.

The tactics that we implement to inform patients about a clinical trial and then to keep them motivated to continue in the trial are not off-the-shelf ticket items. We know that each patient recruited will bring his or her own set of beliefs and information needs. In business, we often use Myers-Briggs as a way to build teams and recognize the differences among us. We embrace those differences and slowly learn how to work within our structure. We must do the same when communicating with patients globally about their health and their decision to volunteer to be a research study participant.

Crafting solutions can be challenging. In these cost-conscious times, sponsors are looking for the most cost-effective way to get their message across. As an agency working in these lean times, we are moving forward with new technologies and communication channels to reach all patients. London 2012 showed what can be achieved in tough economic times. The athletes have proved that regardless of ethnic background or values, there was a common goal and everyone has been part of the greatest sports day the world will see for another four years.

The same sense of belonging can be achieved for clinical trial participants; you just need to know what makes them tick….

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Aug29

Communicating Value in Our Changing Healthcare System

Posted by Emily Kidder from Ogilvy CommonHealth Specialty Marketing - NJ, North America

By Emily Kidder from Ogilvy CommonHealth Specialty Marketing - NJ, North America | Published: August 29, 2012

Recently, the Supreme Court of the United States issued a 5-4 ruling essentially upholding the entirety of the 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA). Many Americans, including the millions working in the healthcare industry, have questions about what the SCOTUS decision means. As many of the provisions of the law come on-line in 2014, the full long-term impact is not yet clear. What is certain however is the healthcare sector is changing, fast. The shift toward more patient-centered care and measurable quality-based healthcare outcomes started prior to the 2010 law, and this movement will continue regardless of the ultimate outcome of health reform.

Moving from volume to value

In the healthcare delivery system of the past, providers were paid to treat problems, not prevent them; financial incentives were based on volume versus outcomes and multiple providers with little coordination delivered care. All of which contributed to healthcare costs rising at an unsustainable pace. Now, however, a paradigm shift is upon us.

In the idealized healthcare delivery system of tomorrow, providers are incentivized to increase quality and improve outcomes across their respective populations, infrastructure and processes are used to reduce variations and better coordinate care, and healthcare spending becomes a purposeful investment in value. Indeed, almost three-quarters (73%) of C-suite healthcare executives in a recent survey by Forbes Insights and Allscripts agreed that providers need to begin shifting their focus from “volume to value” immediately.1

The changing definition of “value”

But what does “value” mean in our brave new healthcare world? Value is one of those buzzwords flying around that has been absorbed and redefined by different stakeholders.  For patients, value means improved access to healthcare, high-quality patient-centric care, and improved patient engagement including better patient-provider communication.  For providers, value means ensuring patients receive high-quality accountable care based on best practices, including improved coordination across provider types and sites of care. Additionally, value for providers can mean receiving fair compensation—something that novel delivery systems and payment methods, including patient-centered medical homes and bundled payment schemes seek to address. For administrators, value means ensuring a sustainable healthcare system by placing particular emphasis on reducing waste, errors and redundancy.  The meaning of value in pharmaceuticals is changing as well. Now, not only are safety and efficacy evaluated, but effectiveness and appropriateness of treatment are also considered, while quality of reimbursement is downplayed. Wired health tools, such as electronic health records, are used to support treatment decisions, improve collaboration and measure behavior and outcomes.

How to communicate value now

With greater alignment across audiences, tomorrow’s healthcare delivery system demands more integrated value messages. New ways of communicating with patients and establishing value for the healthcare provider may become even more important. For example, development of safer drugs requiring less counseling, less paperwork, and drugs that have easier access to brand information could become important criteria of differentiation. Information and messages could be tailored to various HCPs and distributed in a less vertically structured environment. Outcomes research may help inform patient-centered value perspective in messages. Also, in the increasingly collaborative provider environment, the patient, her advocates, caregivers, and multidisciplinary HCP teams (social workers, MDs, RNs, NPs) may become even more important audiences to consider. This is especially true for serious diseases where care typically crosses into different disciplines and healthcare settings.

The US healthcare system is changing at a rapid pace. Still, however, the innovative delivery systems that seek to balance quality, cost and access are still in their early phases of implementation. Staying on top of these developments to identify strategic opportunity and translating insights into value-driven communication is more important now than ever before. Proactivity and adaptability will be the defining characteristics of winners on the changing healthcare landscape.

1   http://images.forbes.com/forbesinsights/StudyPDFs/AllscriptsVolumetoValue.pdf

Also posted in behavior change, Efficacy, Healthcare Communications, Patient Communications, Physician Communications, Reimbursement, Strategy | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment
Aug7

Have You Geo-Fenced Your Healthcare Provider Today?

Posted by Denise Rivera from OCH Medical Media - NJ, North America

By Denise Rivera from OCH Medical Media - NJ, North America | Published: August 7, 2012

What is a geo-fence?

A geo-fence is a dynamically generated, predefined set of boundaries—as in a radius around a store or other location—similar to school attendance zones or neighborhood boundaries.

Why use it in physician-targeted marketing plans?

The latest data (source: Kantar Media) shows that 68% of healthcare professionals (HCPs) surveyed use smartphones for professional purposes on a daily basis.



Over the past year, HCPs have increased their usage by 77%, and usage continues to grow rapidly.


Geo-fencing allows marketers to message physicians by specialty and location, using a combination of GPS and wireless technology (mobile or Wi-Fi). Strategically selecting a geographical point of interest creates a virtual zone (aka, a geo-fence) to deliver a brand message or initiate an action.

A fantastic application of this medium would be at medical conferences. The technology also allows for creating a zone around hospitals or medical centers such as the Mayo Clinic or Cleveland Clinic. Multiple geo-circles can be created and varying messaging served depending on campaign goals. Once a physician/allied healthcare professional enter the geo-fence, relevant ads (eg, brand awareness, clinical information, or a coupon/voucher) are delivered to that individual based on his or her preferences and other targeting attributes. Think of it as virtual geo-targeting—creating a more targeted communication to a specific subset of HCPs within a very specific demographic location.

Not receiving the results you want?  Then expand the radius of your parameters.


IAB mobile banner ad sizes can be utilized to target based on location of their users. This will enable higher conversions assisting with better brand ROI.

It is known that the mobile market still remains highly fragmented.



One vendor offering a solution is Tomorrow Networks (TN). TN has partnered with Physicians Interactive and Remedy Systems to connect brands with their HCPs and consumers via online/mobile applications solutions. Their network consists of HCPs in all specialties, and they have the ability to geo-fence, which can be an added feature to an existing campaign.


Mobile is the fastest growing segment in the advertising industry—don’t miss the boat.

Whether you are optimizing your campaign by state, mobile device, apps, specialty, uniques, or even impressions—do it in real time. Consider geo-fencing for your next mobile campaign.

Please contact your Ogilvy CommonHealth Medical Media account manager for more information.

Also posted in advertising, Branding, Clients, geo-fencing, Great Ideas, Healthcare Communications, Marketing, Physician Communications, Technology | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment
Aug2

Still Crazy After All These Years

Posted by Michele Moss from Ogilvy CommonHealth Consumer Care - NJ, North America

By Michele Moss from Ogilvy CommonHealth Consumer Care - NJ, North America | Published: August 2, 2012

I bought a car once because I liked the TV commercial.

And I didn’t even like the car. Crazy, huh?

It was those TV spots with the Crocodile Dundee guy, Paul Hogan, that made me yearn to take the wheel of the then brand new Subaru Forester. The spots had him teaming up Indiana Jones-style with sexy female accomplices for derring-do missions. Clearly they targeted the Forester to females, and I bought it…literally.

I remember to this day standing between the Forester and the Outback, trying to decide which car to choose. I liked the Outback better. But I still bought the Forester. This was back in 1998, and I still remember those TV spots.

The power of advertising.

That reminds me of another great creative campaign…for cheese. It was “Behold the power of cheese.” A deep-voiced announcer intoned that phrase while we watched dogs held spellbound as they looked at a piece of cheese held in front of them.

That’s the power great creative has…it can stop you in your tracks, and make you do things you wouldn’t ever before have considered doing, things your mama warned you about. But then all of a sudden, you have to have whatever that is in your life.

All because of great creative. 

I’m crazy about creative.

It’s my addiction, and I can’t get enough of it. It’s what’s kept me in this crazy business for decades.

It’s what all of us creatives live for…to create the campaign that knocks it out of the ballpark, that everyone talks about, that everyone says, “I wish I’d done that.” The one that gets tacked up on the wall of fame.

However…as we know in our world of healthcare marketing, there can be many forces that seem to conspire against our best efforts…the regulatory restrictions, the FDA, budget limitations, the list goes on.

But we don’t let that stop us, and when we do amazing work in spite of those obstacles, the rewards are even sweeter.

So that’s why I get jazzed when I hear my fellow creatives here talk about what gets them excited.

Just the other day, there we were—creative leads from each of our divisions, interviewing a fresh-faced college grad so full of enthusiasm as she talked about why she wants to start her career as a writer here at Ogilvy CommonHealth. So she asked each of us to talk about what we do.

My colleague in OCH Medical Marketing starts it off by describing with great pride the responsibility of putting into the hands of healthcare professionals the materials that will motivate them to give their patients the benefits of the prescription medications we market for our clients.

Then my colleague from OCH Payer Marketing chimes in with great intensity that in order for those patients to have access to those drugs, the drugs have to be on healthcare insurance formularies, so his job is to communicate the business and economic benefits of partnering with those pharma companies.

Next, my colleague from OCH Specialty Marketing speaks with such fervor about promoting newly discovered molecules that are just a breath away from bringing life-saving treatments to those who until now had no hope.

And I close by saying that everyone’s health and well-being is our passion at OCH Consumer Care, whether we talk directly to consumers, or to patients through their healthcare providers.

So I guess I could sum it all up by saying that here at Ogilvy CommonHealth Worldwide we creatives have the power to make a difference, a real difference, in people’s lives.

Now that truly is the power of creative.

Well that’s my story. I’d like to hear yours.

So, tell me…

Why are you still crazy about creative?

What’s the craziest thing advertising ever made you do?

 

Also posted in advertising, agency life, Branding, Clients, Creativity, Great Ideas, Healthcare Communications, Managed Care, Marketing | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Response
Jul31

Affordability of Medicines—the New Kid on the Block

Posted by Carsten Edwards from Ogilvy Healthworld Market Access-UK, London

By Carsten Edwards from Ogilvy Healthworld Market Access-UK, London | Published: July 31, 2012

You know the feeling: you pop into the shop and see something you want to buy, but times are tight and you simply can’t afford it. You want the best, but you feel compelled to consider all your spending priorities and choose to go for the less expensive brand—it’s a question of affordability.

In today’s environment, this is a challenge facing healthcare systems throughout the world. Coupled with this, more healthcare resources are being consumed as people are living longer with increasingly complex health problems. Add to this the increased complexity of how national health systems are assessing a medicine’s value, and you have the perfect storm.

Indeed, just as you weigh up whether you can afford to pay for something, those who pay for medicines (termed “payers”) all have affordability at the forefront of their minds. Governments are addressing the issue by driving further healthcare reforms, while payers are aggressively managing costs, limiting therapy choice, and shifting more of the cost burden to consumers.

However, if industry is to effectively support payers in their informed decision-making, it is important that they are viewed as investors in their community’s health and not simply gatekeepers of the budget.

As investors in health, payers deploy a variety of instruments to support medicines’ cost control. These can be broadly divided into supply-side and demand-side approaches.

Demand-side instruments include:

  • National-level price negotiations/price cuts
  • Reference pricing systems–using the cost of other similar drugs to set the price
  • Health technology assessments–assessing the value of a medicine using a range of tools including cost- and comparative-effectiveness
  • Promoting generic medicines and parallel imports–parallel imports refer to the practice of importing a medicine from another market where the medicine is cheaper

Supply-side instruments include:

  • Patient co-payments–this is the practice where patients will pay a certain percentage of the medicine’s cost
  • Reimbursement restrictions–restricting the money paid for a particular drug
  • Delisting–removing a product from a list of drugs that will be paid for
  • Prescribing budgets–setting financial budgets for the prescribing of medicines
  • Formularies and guidelines–a list of medicines that have been approved to be prescribed, or their incorporation within guidelines that should be adhered to

To date, the pharmaceutical industry has focused predominantly on communicating about cost and cost-effectiveness to secure optimal pricing and reimbursement for their brands at a market level. Arguably, more needs to be done to demonstrate the true benefit of treatment to patients, the communities in which they live, and society at large.

Some solutions to help demonstrate the true value of a treatment include:

  • Evaluating and demonstrating the longer-term patient outcomes
  • Demonstrating and communicating the economic value across all stages of a product lifecycle
  • Supporting payers to identify which patient segments would benefit most from treatment
  • Relating the outcomes demonstrated through clinical trials to local demographics

There is no doubt that the industry continues to go through a challenging time, while the economic crisis faced by many countries is only likely to get worse. In this environment, the issue of affordability is higher up on governments’ and payers’ agendas. However, by understanding and meeting the needs of payers and their communities, the industry will be better placed to ensure patient access to their medicines.

 

 

Also posted in adherence, Clients, clinical trials, Efficacy, Health & Wellness, Healthcare Communications, Managed Care, Marketing, medical affairs, Reimbursement | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment
Jul19

A “Credit Score” for Medication Adherence?

Posted by James Ruiz from Ogilvy CommonHealth - NJ, North America

By James Ruiz from Ogilvy CommonHealth - NJ, North America | Published: July 19, 2012

In June of 2011, FICO—originator of the credit score in 1956—introduced a medication adherence score model that predicts patient adherence to prescription medications. Approximately 3 million Americans were to have an adherence score by the end of 2011 and an additional 10 million are expected to have one by 2012.  If proven a predictor of adherence, this new score has the potential to revolutionize prescription drug marketing and may have sweeping implications for the insurance industry.

Most Americans are familiar with credit scores—often referred to as FICO scores. The FICO scoring system was created by Fair Isaac and Company and is used to predict the likelihood of a consumer to repay a loan. The lower the FICO score of the consumer, the greater the risk of default to the lender.

Years ago FICO scores became a key tool for banks and financial institutions in marketing credit cards and loans. What quickly became apparent was that the consumers with the lowest scores were generally the most responsive to credit offers.

The FICO score revolutionized credit by enabling lenders to reach a balance between risk and an acceptable cost to acquire new customers. The score eliminates the time and expense of marketing to potentially inappropriate consumers or to those unlikely to respond. It also short-cut the amount of information needed for lending decisions, spawning “instant credit” and rapid approval of auto loans. In a similar way, a medication adherence score could alert a healthcare provider immediately if a patient is at risk of being nonadherent, so appropriate steps to improve their adherence can start early.

Medication adherence is a major issue for patients, employers, managed care and pharmaceutical companies and is a multibillion-dollar problem in the US. A score that predicts medication adherence can help pharmaceutical companies in two key ways:

  • For brands with medication adherence programs, they can target the programs to patients who actually need help with medication to more efficiently produce better healthcare outcomes
  • New patients can be acquired who are more likely to be adherent to medications

This is all good. But where banks and financial institutions found that the FICO credit score became a predictor of responsiveness to direct marketing, it is not yet known if the medication adherence score will have a similar predictive quality with respect to direct marketing. It is also to be determined whether a medication adherence program delivered to patients who have a score is more effective at increasing medication adherence vs. traditional programs delivered to patients without a score.

In managed care, there is continual pressure to make patients more accountable for their health and well-being, and the adherence score has the potential to stratify insurance pricing based on adherence. It could be used to exclude patients from coverage much like credit scores are used in underwriting property and casualty insurance, and also has the potential to impact how life insurance is underwritten.

Early adopters will be the first organizations to start reaping the benefits of medication adherence scores to improve patient healthcare outcomes and strengthen their brands. When it comes to medication adherence scores, is your company making things happen or watching what happens?

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