Price Waterhouse Coopers: Non-compliance costing pharma billions?
I don't like assumptions when your business planning. Not in today's marketing environment which is changing rapidly. Business plans are not worth anything once they are printed because the variables that effect the implementation of the plan are always in motion. I believe that all business plans should be flexible and that the goal of any company is to react to changes within the market with speed of implementation. Now there are those that say "speed" and "pharma marketing" should never be used together to which I say "horse hockey!" Big pharma had better learn to be nimble or else they will lose potential business that can add millions of dollars to the bottom line. But let's get back to the PWC report and the issue of compliance.
According to the report:
.In a perfect world, all patients would adhere to their treatment regimens. But the world is far from perfect. The FDA and National Council on Patient Information and Education report that 14% to 21% of US patients never fill their original prescriptions; 60% cannot identify their own medications; and 12% to 20% use other people’s therapies. Even patients who do not commit such flagrant abuses often compromise the effectiveness of the therapies they take by consuming them at irregular intervals or failing to complete the course, while some people with chronic diseases stop taking their medications altogether
Compliance. How can pharma make people more compliant? Or... How can pharma alter patient behavior? Uhhhhh......alter behavior? Isn't that the job of ALL marketers and why marketers spend billions of dollars on marketing programs? Hell we can't even get people to fasten their seat belts or stop smoking !
The issue here is that you are taking a pill and
putting into your body. A foreign substance is
invading your privacy and leading to side effects
that most people don't want. Even if it helps
them stay healthy the issue here is that pharma
cannot effect patient compliance with mass
marketing. Yes there are some products that
encourage you to stay on therapy but for the most
part pharma has given up on compliance because of
the lack of success. It's all about personal
marketing but God forbid that any pharma
marketing organization should think about
that...what would the media say? Can you imagine
"Drug companies push people to stay on their
medications to increase sales".
Compliance is an important issue but if
physicians cannot get people to lose weight to
get healthier or stop smoking to live longer
there isn't any mass market program that can be
implemented in the mass market to increase
compliance. The only program that can increase
compliance is continued emphasis on compliance at
every level in the health care model, from
physicians to pharmacy. Physicians should call
patients to get them back into the office to ask
them about taking their medications and should
have, as part of a computerized program, a list
of patients who are due to get renewals on their
Rx's. Pharmacies should also have a program to
call patients to ask about renewing scripts once
a current Rx should have been exhausted. Yes this
would require a new way of thinking and more
interventions but the only way to increase
compliance is with hand holding and reminders.
You see time is the new currency and people don't
have time to make appointments with their doctors
go to the physicians office, wait in the waiting
room, then get to see their doctor and ask for
another Rx. Even when you get the Rx you still
have to drive to the drugstore and wait again for
your Rx. People just don't have the time or are
unwilling to trade the time for what they see a
"little benefit".
What is needed is a new way to
dispense drugs easily and for patients to request
new Rx's without having to allocate 2-3 hours out
of their busy days. It's not a pharma problem
it's a health care problem !
I will be reviewing the rest of the PWC Report
later for some good chuckles but to the authors
it maybe time for them to come back to the
reality of a marketplace in which consumers have
all the power, in which the marketing environment
is hostile towards pharma and the
politicalization of the FDA. Thus endth the
lesson