Market Access,are You Really Ready?

Abstract

In today's health-care market, the pharmaceutical ‘decision-making process'has expanded to include not only prescribers but also multiple stakeholders and influencers. New market access models have started to emerge whereby there is much greater contact and collaboration with these ‘new'customers. Successful implementation of these new market access approaches call for a high degree of customer intelligence and cross-functional coordination within the company. Knowledge access and exchange also is pivotal to both customer understanding and internal coordination and collaboration. The development of a strategy, along with the people and capabilities to execute, appears to have the highest impact on eventual success. Today, companies consider themselves to be at varying stages of readiness. About 50–75 per cent have a managed market team within their organizations; however, there is a continuum of readiness required across fundamental operational factors: people, information and knowledge, organization, performance management, process and technology. This article examines these factors, summarizing findings of a survey of market access executives and describing critical and priority practices that a company should establish and maintain for market access readiness.