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 Forecasting Managed Care Decisions
By Doug Willson, Senior Vice President, and Rick
Nelson, Associate Vice President
In today's competitive pharmaceutical marketplace,
quantitative research with managed care decision
makers has begun to play an increasingly important
role in assessing early stage opportunities for drugs
in development. Historically, quantitative research with
payers was confined to later stages, focusing
primarily on pricing decisions for drugs with
established clinical performance. With many brands
going generic in the next few years and increasingly
crowded pipelines, payers will play a greater role in
the success of drugs that launch in the future. As a
result, there has been renewed interest in factoring in
the impact of payers in early stage forecasts.
This article provides a short primer for developing
choice modeling studies with MCOs, to help ensure
your next forecasting study involving MCOs runs
smoothly. We review the basics of preliminary
qualitative research, sample design, survey content,
choice modeling, and analysis, and illustrate with
examples from specific studies.
 Hellooo Out There
Historically, the majority of pharmaceutical marketing
research work has focused on the physician. To the
extent that we have paid attention to the patient at all,
we have focused on him/her as someone with a
disease. Little or no attention has been paid by the
pharmaceutical industry in particular, or the health
care industry more generally, to understanding the
population of people as people, and the similarities
and differences among them.
As the doctor's role in treating many conditions
continues to shrink, we must develop a body of
knowledge about the general population that is both
broad and deep so we can understand with whom we
are dealing as various situations arise. Against the
backdrop of the consumer/patient stakeholder playing
an increasingly important role in health care, this
month's published document for The Orange
Pages discusses the influence of psychology,
both normal and abnormal, in the conduct of health
care marketing research with these groups as well as
two mistakes health care companies commonly make
in dealing with consumers/patients.
Did You Miss the October 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.
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November 2009
 Theory Can Be Great, But Practice Can Be Tough Over the decades that I have been in the business, I have repeatedly, if not constantly, been offended by the extent to which marketing research data are utilized for only one purpose, with the report or presentation then being shoved in a drawer never to be heard from again. While years ago I taught in my seminar series that all pharmaceutical marketing research should be "purpose built," i.e., designed to answer only the marketing research question currently being explored and presented only in that context, I have since reversed my perspective on this issue. More specifically, I now believe that every drop of information should be wrung out of any pharmaceutical marketing research and resulting data, and that such information should be stored appropriately for use in later applications. Tougher marketing challenges, more constraints on research budgets and myriad other factors have led to this change in my thinking. That having been said, I advocated in last month's Orange Pages module for health care companies to develop knowledge bases, into which their research findings and other data could be poured. When subsequent questions arise, this database can be accessed as an initial, robust and historical source of information on the topic, before incremental dollars are spent to conduct new research...  Richard B. Vanderveer, Ph.D. CEO, GfK Healthcare   |
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