  |
||||||
 |
||||||
 What Health Care Reform Is and Is Not!
On a daily basis now, health care reform is making
headlines. President Obama has made it clear that no
only is health care reform a major priority for him, but
also that he is bound and determined to accomplish it
quickly. But what exactly is health care reform and
what metrics should be established to determine if it
is has been accomplished and accomplished
successfully?
Unfortunately, many people understand the goal of
health care reform as being universal coverage, i.e.,
providing health care insurance for all. But such a view
is hopelessly naïve. Book after book has been
published in 2009 getting under the kimono of health
care and demonstrating that such a simpleminded
view is not the point.
In this month's Orange Pages module, Richard
Vanderveer, CEO of GfK Healthcare, shares highlights
of another such a book. Titled "Cured! The Insider's
Handbook for Health Care Reform," the book's 450
pages reveal that health care reform is fundamentally
not what most people think it is, and won't be
accomplished nearly as quickly as the president
believes. Rather, Stephen Hyde, the author, describes
in great detail the various aspects of health care that
must be reformed, and points out some ways in which
such reform will need to take place.
 A Systematic Approach to Developing an Effective Professional Visual Aid
By Noah M. Pines, Executive Vice President, GfK
Healthcare, and Cathy Su, Associate Director of
Market Research, Gilead Sciences
The visual aid (which also is referred to as a detail aid
or sales aid) remains the cornerstone of the
pharmaceutical sales representative's promotional
arsenal for detailing physicians in the field. Ideally, the
visual aid is either a hard copy or (increasingly) an
electronic booklet which contains the most important
clinical facts about a pharmaceutical brand and (as
necessary) other relevant information about the
disease state or market, e.g., epidemiological
information, other relevant clinical trial results and/or
marketing facts.
The objective of the visual aid is to educate the
physician or other health care provider (HCP) about a
pharmaceutical product or a topic relevant to the
usage of a particular product. It should motivate the
physician or other HCP to prescribe the product in an
appropriate and optimal manner consistent with
labeled indication(s). When considering the
standards of an effective visual aid, the main criteria
are that it should be: Organized in a manner that
engages the physician/HCP; reflective of a logical
argument or story flow; and presentable in an efficient
and unobtrusive manner by a sales representative.
While the entire visual aid may not be presented
during each individual sales visit - rather, the
representative may elect just to present a particular
graph or chart - it should generally be organized in a
story-like order or format. The sales aid typically
contains a number of classic ingredients including
(but not limited to):
A Beginner's Guide to Marketing Research in the Emerging BRIC Nations: Where Pharmaceutical Marketing is Going and How You Can Get There
Free Educational Webcast
September 9, 2:00 - 3:15 p.m. EST
Save the Date! What if you could map out a way to leverage your
brand, not just domestically but beyond borders in
emerging nations? The new evolving world of
marketing demands you rethink and reinvent
opportunities for your brand. And global presence is a
particularly significant option.
To enrich your understanding of the health care
landscape within the emerging markets of Brazil,
Russia, India and China (BRIC) and help identify
opportunities where you can leverage your brand's
potential in other corners of the globe, GfK Healthcare
is hosting this webcast.
Did You Miss the July Issue of Topline?
Click
here to read the issue, which
includes:
Topline
archive is available. Skim the
directory and select
articles you missed. Access subscriber
opt-in/comment form.
|
 |
|
|
August 2009
 I Think I've Finally Figured It Out! In my recent articles and presentations, I have written and commented on the fundamental changes in what we used to call "pharmaceutical marketing research.'' As we saw the dollars spent on this type of research dwindle, we blamed it on the loss of patent exclusivity by many of the world's major drugs, and the apparent inability of pharmaceutical company research and development departments to replace those drugs with new blockbusters. But there is a cause more fundamental than that. Quite simply, we are moving from an era of pharmaceutical marketing research focused on advertising and promotion to an era of health care marketing research focused on issues involved in health care reform. As I write in July 2009, the topic of health care reform at the federal level is getting as much attention as Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan. But what does the term "health care reform" mean? Many believe that health care reform at its simplest level means layering additional taxes on the wealthy and using the money to provide health insurance for the millions of Americans who do not currently have such coverage. Several flaws are inherent in this simpleminded approach. First, as the president himself has noted, it does nothing to improve the effectiveness of U.S. health care, where what we get vs. what we pay for is one of the worst deals in health care worldwide. In brief, the medical care provided in the United States is not nearly at the stellar world-leader level many of us believe it is, and nothing in the Robin Hood approach of taking from the rich and giving to the poor does anything to fix that. That's a major oversight which calls for an organized plan to improve the quality of care, not just manipulate economics. As we have noted in prior articles, the key to improving the quality of care is not to build better doctors, but rather to develop standardized methods of care based on evidenced-based medicine. Another flaw in the Robin Hood approach is that in large part it is based on the belief that those who do not have health insurance coverage are simply too poor to purchase it. Wrong! Millions of Americans have more than sufficient money to acquire health insurance in the open market, but simply choose not to do so. Often they are young, healthy and would rather spend the money that they would have to spend on insurance premiums on other items. So Robin Hood won't buy us full health care reform in this sense either...  Richard B. Vanderveer, Ph.D. CEO, GfK Healthcare   |
||
        
|
||||||