How to Include Payers and Regulators into Your Communication Strategy

Payer influence is on the rise.

"A 2011 Monitor survey of more than 200 pharmaceutical company executives showed that payers have gained significant influence in health care in recent years. Meanwhile, the influence of general practitioners (GPs) has practically evaporated, calling into question the vast amounts of money and human resources pharmaceutical companies continue to invest in communicating with GPs."

Payers are pitting manufacturers against each other when there’s commonality in efficacy.

“Morris says research suggests that payers are more aggressively managing specialty categories like oncology, RA and MS through tools like prior authorization and preferred formulary status.”

The error is that many organizations invest resources in price optimization rather than communication and relationship enhancements and analysis.

With this in mind, how can pharma companies begin to include payers and regulators into their communication strategy?

Consider including the following 6 tactics into your payer communication strategy:

1. Segment your payers.  Identify those Pharmacy &Therapeutic committee members that are a part of the quality control group for a payer that reviews and approves products to be in formulary.  Segment your payer lists by drug, drug recipient, the payers’ economics, patient populations, and the competitive landscape.
2. Unify payer profiles. Because there are many divisions within a pharmaceutical company communicating with payers, it’s necessary that these companies work to develop a universal profile of the payer. Capture those payer motivators and their digital engagement across all communication channels and all organizational departments.
3. Integrate the payer perspective.  Work to understand the mind of the payer.  How will payers and regulators access your products and find information about them? Define the personas for those segments identified above.  You must define the communication journey (especially as it relates to the life of the drug), map the content, and identify gaps and opportunity.  Make it easy for payers to seek and engage with information. Reduce the clicks across the channels. Don’t complicate the navigation; drive them directly to the content they desire, mostly likely in the monograph.
4. Leverage the Monograph.  The message and benefits of the drug will reside in the drug evaluation monographs. The monographs evaluate all drugs in all aspects in relation to all similar agents.  They will contain information on the need, effectiveness, risk, and cost of the drug.  It will contain an FDA classification approval rating.  It will consider efficacy, safety, patient convenience, drug interactions, storage and handling. The monograph will communicate any advantages in efficacy, safety, or patient convenience relative to other agents on formulary.  It will also address the needs of the institution, including medical staff needs, distribution concerns, and drug availability.  Links to this information should be provided across all payer communication channels.
5. Clarify the value of, and economic justification for, the drug.  Provide information on the current state of the disease, links to pharmakonetic studies and clinical trials, and notifications of package inserts.
6. Align sales resources with the payer channel.  Develop account teams focused on the payers.  Provide sales tools that allow those sales teams to deliver timely and relevant communications.  By providing pre-approved messaging, and the tools to deliver that communication, companies can empower their teams while remaining compliant.  Digitally capture information on these payers to better understand their decision making process.  This can be accomplished through form optimization and Digital Body Language analysis.

How are you including payers and regulators in your communication strategy?