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Listen

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Listen

If you value the contribution of team members, a good way to encourage it is by listening to them when they speak up. Too often we silence them forever because we didn’t listen to them when they spoke up. Even the best among us are guilty of silencing others.

Listening is not just acknowledging what they said, but honestly trying to figure out how their suggestion can be implemented.

Listening could mean nothing to me, but the world to them.

This is not an act of charity, but labor of love. Labor that is meant to exercise MY empathy muscles so that *I* can become stronger. I need them just as much as they need me.

And who knows…the idea could be sent in Divine Order.

Clarity from a Distance

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Clarity from a Distance

We can think clearly and are quick to make calls on OTHERS’ problems because of the simple advantage that these problems aren’t ours.

However, when the same problem suddenly becomes ours, boy does it consume us with stress and confusion!

We might start with the rational answer, but then second-guess ourselves out of it. Emotion, doubt, and attachment to sunk costs make the decision-making murky where it was once crystal clear.

After hours of churning, we might make the same decision that we would’ve if the problem wasn’t ours.

Which makes me wonder: should we strive to make objective decisions more often?

Health Equity

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Health Equity

Health equity is “in” right now. I’m hoping that this is a trend that doesn’t go away with tie dies, athleisure, and mid-century modern. Here’s a picture that speaks a thousand words about what it is.

There is enough evidence to suggest that disparity is rampant in American health care–and ALL OF US are paying for it.

Striking a balance somewhere between Darwinism and socialism is health equity, where we say “make the unfit fit to survive.” Not because we HAVE to, but because we GET to: “the other is not another, but he is my divine brother.”

Start at Midnight

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Start at Midnight

According to Steve Wexler in his book The Big Picture: How to Use Data Visualization to make Better Decisions—Faster, pie charts are great at giving you a fast and accurate estimate of the part-to-whole relationship for TWO of the slices. Other than that, pie charts are terrible.

This advice is unsettling at first because pie charts are ubiquitous in market access. But he makes some really good points.

If you decide to use pie charts and have more than 2 segments, make sure that the 2 segments you most care about each start at midnight, with one moving clockwise and the other going counterclockwise.

In the examples below, Medicare and Medicaid are the 2 segments of focus. Without having the data labels (this was intentional), could you infer from the the left-hand example that Medicaid = 70% and Medicare = 20%? (It’s hard to determine the size of the Medicare sector because it doesn’t start at midnight). Could you infer the same from the right-hand example? Yes!

Trendsetters

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Trendsetters

To create a path that’s as frictionless as possible for the drug to land in the hands of the patient who needs it is the job of a market access professional.

What a lot of market access professionals don’t realize is that their work has potential to move our health care system forward in so many ways.

The ones who DO recognize this become the trendsetters.

Earning Back an Hour

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Earning Back an Hour

It can feel like drinking from a fire house when information is coming from a million different sources for a particular project. More information means greater likelihood to get lost in its sea.

Staying in control of the information is critical because if it can’t be found when you need it, it might as well not exist.

Here’s the organization system that works for me:

  1. All information (PDFs, other documents, and relevant emails) are filed into the “Background Materials” folder of the project
  2. Also within the “Background Materials” folder is a Word document titled “Document Key” which is basically a table that lists descriptions of all of the files within the folder. It’s a simple table with unlimited rows (1 per document) and 3 columns:
    1. “Materials”: brief description of what’s in the file
    2. “Date”: time stamp of the file; all files are arranged in chronological order
    3. “File Name”: name of the file as it appears in the folder

For every minute spent organizing, an hour is earned –Benjamin Franklin

No Killing With Bullets

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No Killing With Bullets

A slide riddled with bullets can use help from some visualization so that the audience can “get the joke” on the slide within seconds.

Try drawing out the idea on paper. Drawing out the idea not only helps to better understand it, but it can also uncover new findings.

After drawing out the idea, see which diagram family it might belong to (it might belong to a combination of families):

  1. Flow
    1. Linear
    2. Circular
    3. Divergent/convergent
    4. Multidirectional
  2. Structure
    1. Matrices
    2. Trees
    3. Layers
  3. Cluster
    1. Overlapping
    2. Closure
    3. Enclosed
    4. Linked
  4. Radiate
    1. From a point
    2. With a core
    3. Without a core

If you’ve gotten this far, congratulations! The hard work is done. Now it’s a matter of choosing a diagram template (diagrammer.com is a PHENOMENAL resource) and plugging in the information.

Simplicity Is Anything But Simple

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Simplicity Is Anything But Simple

Building a simple deck is anything but simple.

Back at his workshop, the writer creates an outline, draws countless diagrams, does hours of research—and might even re-do some of this because it didn’t work the first time.

None of this will see the light of day. What everyone sees a simple, singing deck.

Empathy Eats Strategy for Breakfast

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Empathy Eats Strategy For Breakfast

Remember that time when you came out of a medical/legal review as glazed over as a donut?

When a medical/legal review comment flies in the face of what YOU believe it should be, ask yourself: “why is he right?”

Before throwing solutions at the wall in hopes that something will stick, understand what’s really at the root of his concern. Listen for clues in his response. It may not what you had imagined AT ALL.

Empathy eats strategy for breakfast.

Sharpening the Axe

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Sharpening the Axe

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” –Abraham Lincoln

Upskilling is highly under-rated. For most people: if it happens, it happens; billable work is what counts. 

How can anyone in Market Access develop professionally without staying up to date? After all, billable work goes to the ones who are up to date.

As Francis Bacon declared roughly five hundred years ago, “He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils: for time is the greatest innovator.”

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