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Market Access Strategic Execution Consultant

Riding the Hoverboard

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Riding the Hoverboard

Crafting market access messages is a lot like riding a hoverboard.

The natural tendency is to teeter back and forth in order to avoid falling. In this balancing act, fall is inevitable when leaning in (shameless bragging) or leaning back (by-the-book bland words).

Shift the focus from leaning to gathering a core balance: figure out exactly what needs to be said and find robust references to support it.

An experienced writer (rider—punny!) is good at maintaining core balance and zipping ahead in what seems like second-nature.

Mistrust Even For Trustful Data

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Mistrust Even For Trustful Data

A sacrosanct rule of bar charts is to always start the y-axis at ZERO. Starting at any other number skews the chart and can draw trouble and mistrust.

What should be the value of the first bar in the graph below? <3.5 million?

It’s actually 6 million. And this chart actually appeared on a major news network in 2014 (!).

“It’s good to learn from your mistakes. It’s better to learn from other people’s mistakes.” –Warren Buffet

Nothing Is Free

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Nothing Is Free

Market access is about giving.

If you give customers enough of what they want, they will give you everything you want.

Those who want something for nothing, will get nothing for something.

Robust Information Management Even When No One Is Looking

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Robust Information Management Even When No One Is Looking

How can you build a tower without the blocks?

How can you build a story in Market Access without datapoints?

No one knows the datapoints better than the writer—but even the writer sometimes attempts to build slides without laying out the datapoints (blocks) first. Good luck!

Mapping out datapoints (information management) does nothing to get the slides done. However, without it, there would be nothing to build the slides with.

It’s hard to marvel at a strong foundation because it’s buried underground and out of sight—but what would you miss in its absence?

Fixing What’s Broken

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Fixing What's Broken

Before discharging patients with heart failure, serious mental illness, or acute renal failure from the hospital, doctors should say, “see you back on the bed within 30 days.”

On average (across the nation and all severity levels), readmission within 30 days is guaranteed for 1 in 5 of these patients.

How troubled would patients feel about this statistic?

How is this acceptable?

We have the best technology in the world.

We also have manpower. According to the Census Bureau, health care/social assistance is THE LARGEST employer in the US with >20,000,000 professionals.

Then why these bleak numbers?

Statistics like these can easily fuel the game of finger-pointing, often amounting to a mound of…nothing.

The only way out is through progress.

Telephone

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Telephone

Children love to play “Telephone”: a leader starts a message, which is whispered down from one person to the next. The last person in line announces the message out loud. It’s hilarious when the message received by the last person is completely different from the message started by the leader.

Surprisingly, Telephone is played all the time at work and messages are misinterpreted all the time—even though no one is whispering them!

What gives?

Clients and team members give directions like, “the story is missing here,” “we need to share this with everyone else,” “jazz this up.” Generic directions like these are called labels. By their nature, labels are interpreted differently by givers and receivers.

Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen lay out how to constructively clarify ambiguous direction in their book Thanks for the Feedback.

When receiving such generic directions, INVESTIGATE WHAT’S UNDER THE LABEL: clarify the advice; clarify consequences and expectations; be open to different interpretations from the way you believe it should be (shift from “wrong spotting” to “difference spotting”).

The 3 Acts in Market Access Stories

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The 3 Acts in Market Access Stories

Evidence suggests that facts are 20 times more likely to be remembered if they’re part of a STORY. Stories are like design: everyone knows a good one when they see it, but only a few can do it.

The barebone framework of a story in Market Access follows the 3-act structure (not 3 sentences/paragraphs/slides, but 3 acts):

Act 1: Situation (there’s a problem)
Act 2: Complication OR Opportunity (the data reveals that the problem is due to xx [Complication] OR the data reveals that there’s an opportunity improve by changing xx [Opportunity])
Act 3: Resolution (our solution can address the problem, creating positive outcomes)

Payer value propositions, for example, follow this 3-act structure:

Act 1: 1 in 3 patients with ALTS are readmitted within 30 days. Each hospitalization can cost up to $50,000
Act 2: Current options to prevent ALTS relapse have dose-limiting side effects, leading to under-treatment
Act 3: In its landmark trial, altsonumab (fictional drug name) decreased the risk of rehospitalization (ARR 42%) and had a side effect profile comparable to placebo

Working With a Purpose

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Working With a Purpose

Market Access is a team sport. In a team sport, EVERYONE is counting on each other to show up to do the work that counts.

There will always be 100 reasons to take a shortcut, complain, shift blame onto someone else, or simply walk away. But what’s the single inspiration to show up?

When working with a purpose, obstacles don’t seem like obstacles anymore, because they become opportunities.

The Asset of Self-Confidence

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The Asset of Self-Confidence

There is something to be said about skills and knowledge. However, nothing can be said about them until they’re put into practice. Putting skills into practice starts with self-confidence.

No one will believe in you unless you do.

For the crazy ones/rebels/misfits/round pegs in a square hole: you’re different because YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE. Believe in yourself.

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