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Market Access Strategic Execution Consultant

Innovation

Collaborations Among Stakeholders

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Collaborations Among Stakeholders

How can us market access professionals (strategists, writers, editors, and everyone else) possibly do our work if we’re not curious enough to seek out our customers’ voice?

In market access, we often treat our asset as our own child and customers’ needs as a stepchild. This backfires on the business as the stepchild always turns out to be the Cinderella of the story.

Isn’t the goal of manufacturers, payers, and providers ultimately the same? To keep patients healthy enough so they stay out of the health care system? It’s just that the market demands each stakeholder to address this call in a different way.

AMCP’s Partnership Forum is a platform where these stakeholders collaborate on tactics and strategies to drive efficiencies and outcomes.

Tapestry Networks is another platform that brings together such stakeholders.

I wonder if there are other such collaborative platforms out there.

Today is the First Day of Your Product’s Life Cycle

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Today is the First Day of Your Product's Life Cycle

What a phenomenal shape the circle is.

Where does it begin? Now, where does it end.

Is it possible that the circle could’ve started at any another point?

Yesterday ended last night. Today is the first day of the rest of your product’s life.

70% of launches fail. There’s evidence to suggest that the first year sets the trajectory for the rest of the product’s life cycle.

Cycle = circle.

Even if your drug has already launched, do you get another chance to begin?

How you got here is not how you will get there. 

The asset inventory is what it is. It takes months-years to generate new evidence. What will you do in the meantime? Your product already has what it needs to penetrate the market in a way that no other product can–if you allow it.

Take a page from Zig Ziglar’s playbook: If you give them enough of what they want, they will give you everything you want.

Lexus Came From Toyota Embracing Conflicting Goals

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Lexus Came From Toyota Embracing Conflicting Goals

If the market demands conflicting outcomes, embrace it (before someone else does).

The market is demanding health care delivery that is affordable + effective—highly conflicting priorities!

Harvard Business Review narrated a successful case of embracing conflicting goals:

‘When designing what became the Lexus line, Ichiro Suzuki, Toyota’s chief engineer, stipulated that the new car needed to be faster, lighter, and more fuel efficient than existing luxury sedans. The order was full of contradictions. Making a car faster usually meant having a bigger, heavier engine; making it lighter without compromising power meant stripping out luxury that was essential for this segment. So, the Lexus team returned to fundamentals and re-evaluated their most basic assumptions about how to build a car. Alongside tens of smaller new ideas, they designed and built a first-of-its-kind aluminum engine that made the car 120 pounds lighter, improving weight and fuel efficiency, thereby delivering on a seemingly impossible demand.’

Right now, all eyes are on payers and PBMs. What are they doing to make health care affordable + effective? Drugs are only effective is they’re used for the right patients at the right time.

Your Customers Should Feel Heard

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Your Customers Should Feel Heard

Everyone has a problem.

Believing that your customers have no problems is just as true as believing that everyone posting smiling photos on Instagram has no problems.

What’s the problem of your customers? What keeps them up at night? What makes it dreadful for them to come back to work the next day? Why are they right to think this way?

The sequel to this would be: How can you show up to delight them? But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. 

Customers feeling like they’re heard is in itself a TREMENDOUS stride forward.

Nurture trust. Nurture relationship.

If your neighbor knocked at your door with freshly baked cherry pie, would you accept it? What if a stranger did the same thing: would you accept it?

Experiment Like Amazon

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Experiment Like Amazon

Today STAT published a story about Amazon officially starting its ascent to the national telehealth stage — and its nationwide expansion is putting the rest of the telemedicine industry on notice.

AP provides more details.

This topic is interesting and relevant to market access in SO many ways.

Besides the fact that Amazon is disrupting the health care system right before our very own eyes, it’s important to appreciate the company’s willingness to experiment.

Amazon partnered with Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase 3 years ago to solve America’s problem of high-cost health care system. This sent shock waves throughout the world of health care.

Then, in January 2021 we learned that this joint venture, called Haven, was disbanding and the stakeholders would individually continue to push forward in their efforts. While some considered this venture a failure, the news today suggests otherwise.

Today, we see what Amazon had been up to. I imagine that this is just the beginning.

Ironically, Fast Company wrote about experimentation today itself. The article asserts that leaders should democratize experimentation because their teams are bursting with untapped ideas. They just need tools and the authority to help drive continuous innovation.

It is no exaggeration to say that the fate of the world hangs on experimentation.

If we open our eyes, we’re surrounded by problems. How can we solve them? How can we measure the effectiveness of our proposed solutions? What would change if we decided to avoid experimentation and live with the status quo? Who would step up if we didn’t vote ourselves for this experiment?

What Business Are We Really In?

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What Business Are We Really In?

Today, Fast Company published an article that absolutely blew my mind. Comunidad Partners, a real estate investment firm that buys apartment communities, renovates them, and manages them, offers its tenants free telehealth services.

Comunidad Partners and its strategic partner, Veritas, has partnered with a Fortune 500 health care provider (they won’t reveal who) for a telehealth contract because they believe that people don’t have to rely on a job to receive health care services. A real estate firm has partnered with a health care provider that otherwise engages with employers only.

At the core of Comunidad Partners is its mission of delivering enhanced multifamily living by providing more than just a home but a LIFESTYLE.

When I read about this, I was reminded of Chipotle who recently launched a makeup collection inspired by ingredients like guacamole and salsa.

We fall in love with what we think we do, instead of what the market wants us to do. Book publishers aren’t in the paper business, any more than Penn Central was in the train business.

What business are we really in? What business does the market want us to be in?

Who Is This Really For?

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Who Is This Really For?

On the same day, both Harvard Business Review and Adam Fein exposed the reality of consolidation within the health care system.

Harvard Business Review predicts that the pandemic will speed up this process. “Given the financial difficulty that many providers have suffered during the pandemic, this trend is likely to continue, reducing competition and increasing prices.”

It seems like the big players are riding the wave (for now, at least).

What I’m wondering is: is this the ultimate truth (big guys get to have all the fun), or is this the perfect opportunity for a new guy (not necessarily little—just new) to creep in and make it reign?

Scott Galloway points out that our health care industry is the industry with the lowest net promoter score (basically, it’s a broken system—as if we needed someone to tell us this). Therefore, the health care industry is ripe for incumbents to be replaced by newcomers.

Generally speaking, smaller companies are more nimble than larger companies. Will the sheer size of a large conglomeration inhibit itself to react/adjust to the borderline-prophetic Great Dispersion as suggested by Scott Galloway? This could very well be the perfect opportunity for a newcomer who wants to eat the pie (not just a slice…but all of it).

To put all of this in a different way, here are 2 questions: (1) Who is this [the vertical and horizontal integrations] for? (2) Who will this be for? Hint: many people have the answer to the first question; the second question cannot be Googled.

To put all of this in a 3rd way: Seth Godin says, ’empathy is at the heart of design.’

Catch the Raindrops Before They Become Hurricanes

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Health care is in for flipping its thinking from defensive to offensive, according to Scott Galloway. He cites CDC data suggesting that 90% of health care spending is linked to chronic and mental health conditions. A widely cited Health Affairs article suggests that only 8% of the population takes advantage of preventative care. ‘Instead of detecting diseases when they’re raindrops, we wait until they become hurricanes that flood and overrun the health care system.’

Let’s not point fingers, because we are all to blame at some level (patients, providers, payers, manufacturers, me—all of us).

It’s hard to let go of our old ways, but sometimes that’s the only choice. The more something doesn’t work, the more we want to hold on to the fantasy that it does.

Flipping our thinking from defensive to offensive, by catching diseases in their early stages, American health care can be more efficient and effective.

I love the way Rohan Rajiv states, ‘walking a mile in another person’s shoes is powerful. Perspective makes us humans.’

What can we let go? What can we pick up?

What can we do to help switch from a defensive to offensive strategy?

Krishna Patel, PharmD
Market Access Strategy and Execution Consultant
info@sojusllc.com
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