7 Worst Mistakes of Market Access Strategies…And How to Avoid Them

7 Worst Mistakes Commonly Made in Market Access Strategies
 
1. Not considering your market access strategy by the time you design your Phase III trials

2. Believing that the criteria for approval will be similar to those for market access

3. Expecting an open listing
Assuming your product will be granted access for all the indications it treats that have good clinical evidence as support? This happens less and less. Early on, think about the segments and find a segment where your brand is a significantly better choice than its competitors. These days a huge percentage of access is given with criteria.

Of course, it would be wonderful. However, if your product is not bringing outstanding significant benefits over all other drugs in the category that hit the payer key drivers, then you may be setting yourself up for some unpleasant news with this expectation. Nevertheless, the good news is that pricing can be successful in gaining rapid access while ensuring a level that you receive the most profit if you use machine learning to do this, and take into account value and outcomes. If you want more information about this, speak to us.

Payers typically hate off-label use. If there is a chance that your brand will have strong potential for off-label use, then don’t just ignore it. Address it and create a plan for how you will be able to decrease the risk.

The goals of payers can be different depending on their specific responsibilities. For example, if a payer is responsible for total healthcare costs, they will examine both drug cost and impact of the drug (reduced hospitalizations, etc.), and showing a significant savings in hospitalization in favor of your drug would be beneficial. However, showing data on reduced hospitalizations to another payer whose responsibility is solely around drug costs will perhaps not be the best use of that meeting. To ensure financial success of a drug, one needs to understand and incorporate the real payer drivers (for each payer influencing the decisions) in your strategy for each stage of development and commercialization. This is most accurately done using artificial intelligence techniques rather than linear approaches.

7. Using inferior methodologies to make decisions
Traditionally Pharma have used methodologies to find drivers which simply asked payers what they think, be it around price points (e.g. Gabor-Granger model, Conklin and Murphy model, Van Westendorp model, or some kind of conjoint trade-off model) or other factors. The available data has gotten very rich and so have the techniques that available to analyze this data and get to the real issues driving payer choices and behaviors. We can apply techniques which use artificial intelligence and machine learning to develop conclusions that are not bounded by the assumptions of out-of-date analytical techniques.
Also, keep in mind a few other things when you are planning.
    •    Ensure you include the payers in decisions. By having pre-submission meetings, you will be able to explain things that may not be clear to them and get additional data or information they need in advance so that obstacles do not develop later.


    •    Develop a contingency plan in case you do not get a listing. Nothing is ever black or white. Maybe you need a product listing agreement or some other option. Have a plan for what options you will pursue if you get a no.


    •    Ensure message consistency between your market access messaging, your marketing messaging and your clinical messaging. The wording may be slightly different but the messages must be congruent across these departments and, of course, evidence-based.

The majority of new drugs come with some improvement on the existing drugs for the condition, but unless payers see value in their terms, in that improvement, and have it tied to their underlying drivers, it will not assist gaining favorable market access and pricing. If the product hits their sweet spot in terms of drivers, price will be only one of several factors considered. Think about it, if you want something enough, don’t you come up with strong rational arguments why you should get it? Why do so many people have iPhones when other companies make cheaper and equivalent phones? We rationalize an argument for an iPhone to ourselves. We want the Apple brand because it hits our drivers better.