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Market Access Strategic Execution Consultant

Safari

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Safari

Imagine a herd of zebras at a safari. It doesn’t matter where they were headed, because they will all race blindly towards the tourist’s feed bucket when they see it, in hopes of filling their bellies. This hope is incredible because in reality only ~5% of the herd will be able to eat while everyone else will starve.

The bucket is bigger than the zebras in this blind race because it’s taking them with it.

Market access professionals who are engaging in a petty fight for limited formulary space are letting payers take charge of the game in the same way that the zebras let the feed bucket take charge of the game.

How can you take back control to ensure that the right drug reaches the right patient at the right time?

When Customers Have Choices

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When Customers Have Choices

What is the customer looking for?

Delighting customers means delivering on what they expect PLUS adding an unexpected element of surprise that makes you remarkable.

Hint: think about how you want them to feel…then work backwards. Feelings are real and they deserve more credit than we give might give them. As intellectual species, we like to think that we make rational decisions–but that’s far from the truth.

When you cannot give them what they came for, they’ll simply continue window shopping until they find what they’re looking for. They have choices.

What’s the Point?

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What's the Point?

Most people are typically in the workforce for 40-45 years.

During that time, those with a good career started with zealous bang, earned a fortune, but lived in a state of doubt and exhaustion for the last decade of their career: “what’s the point of any of this” or “I’m too old for this.”

Millions who pass through the workforce in this way are replaced and forgotten soon after they leave.

In contrast, we remember Socrates, Benjamin Franklin, Harriet Tubman, and Lord Krishna hundreds and thousands of years after they left. Why?

These people dedicated themselves to something bigger than a paycheck.

What is your calling?

Who will miss you when you’re gone?

Remembering Hippocrates on Father’s Day

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Remembering Hippocrates on Father's Day

Hippocrates is considered the father of modern medicine. We might not know why, but many of us have heard of the Hippocratic Oath. Pharmacists had to pledge to a variation of this oath at graduation. When we revisit memories, it’s hard not to assess: “where are we now.”

Here’s a modern version of the Hippocratic Oath.

I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant:

I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.

I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures [that] are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism.

I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon’s knife or the chemist’s drug.

I will not be ashamed to say “I know not,” nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another are needed for a patient’s recovery.

I will respect the privacy of my patients, for their problems are not disclosed to me that the world may know. Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God.

I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person’s family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick.

I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure.

I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.

If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life and art, respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter. May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help.

—Written in 1964 by Louis Lasagna, Academic Dean of the School of Medicine at Tufts University, and used in many medical schools today.

The Potential of Just One

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The Potential of Just One

When everyone else is a walking zombie, the easiest thing to do is to become a zombie ourselves (“oh well”).

Majority of people take the path of least resistance because it’s seemingly the safest.

Every now and again, however, someone is brave enough to question the status quo.

The challenge for him is to preserve his own spark despite the surrounding darkness.

Besides, this person is the zombies’ best chance for another life.

“Who will take up my work?” asks the setting sun.

None has an answer in the entire silent world.

An earthen lamp says, humbly, from a corner: “I will my Lord, as best as I can.” –Rabindranath Tagore

Pitches

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Pitches

If pitches win business, they continue long past the 45-minute presentation with the Client.

After winning the business, EVERY meeting with the Client thereafter is also a pitch for FUTURE business.

Leave the room brighter than you found it.

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!

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