New Critical Channels in DTP

We’re smack dab in the middle of a massive landscape shift. The days of patient marketing being solely focused on driving awareness and demand, with therapeutic management pull-through, are over. We’ve entered a new era of direct-to-patient marketing.

Awareness, disease understanding, and demand still matter. And patient experience, onboarding, and long-term disease and therapy management remain critical to the success of pharma marketing teams.

But there’s a major problem hiding in plain sight: the leaky bucket.

Many patients never experience improved health outcomes because they simply can’t access or afford the therapy, even with insurance. That means all the investment pharma marketers put into demand generation, patient support, onboarding, and therapeutic management often never gets realized.

Because if patients can’t get on therapy, none of it matters.

91% of HCPs note changing their clinical decisions due to access, affordability, or paperwork burden. This drives 10-15 million+ prescriber avoidance events a year.

And even if HCPs can successfully navigate these dynamics, the trick is getting patients to successfully start on therapy.

Approximately 45 million prescriptions are abandoned at the pharmacy each year in the U.S., resulting in untreated or undertreated patient populations, and the #1 reason patients abandon prescriptions at the pharmacy is out-of-pocket cost.

Research has found that the best chance to avoid patient abandonment is a narrow window of less than 72 hours post-script.

So the question becomes:

• How can pharma support the HCP throughout the clinical decisions and ePrescribing process?
• How can pharma help to get patients on therapy?

Our perspective is that one of the most critical moments for pharma marketers, including patient marketers,is the Point-of-Clinical-Decision: the moment when patients and HCPs are together in the office and navigating these dynamics.

Further, it’s critical that pharma marketers look at the EHR as a strategic tool to help successfully get patients prescribed therapy and to stay on therapy.

I know what those familiar with EHR initiatives are thinking: Isn’t the EHR just an opportunity for HCPs? Isn’t it just a messaging play?

Opportunities for intervention within the EHR have evolved greatly for marketers, especially as health systems look to achieve their quintuple aim goals. EHRs are now an established channel for pharma marketers to address these customer dynamics through:

• Access and affordability messaging directly in the EHR to help educate HCPs and overcome any pre-existing biases
• Form-fill support to help relieve the paperwork burden and directly integrate into Hub Services, Specialty Pharmacy, copay, and more
• Patient-branded or therapeutic area information, printed and shared with patients at discharge
• Patient-branded or therapeutic area information distributed through patient portals

Now more than ever, it’s imperative to look at EHR as a critical part of the DTP mix.

Have questions on how to bring this to life for your brands? Email me at zachary.shapiro@relevatehealth.com