American Healthcare in Transition
The American healthcare industry is in the early stages of a transition that will change the way healthcare is researched, delivered, paid for, marketed, prescribed, tracked, and consumed. And it’s long overdue.
Trends accelerating these changes include:
- Healthcare costs are out of control
- Many blockbuster drugs are going off patent and will become “generic” while the new drug approval process is slower and more expensive than ever
- Managed care, a giant in the industry, has dramatic influence over which drugs get prescribed
- Pharmaceutical companies are cutting back on staff and spending, while in the meantime a wave of large mergers and acquisitions have affected the industry
- Millions of previously uninsured Americans will join the ranks of the insured, taxing an already overtaxed health care delivery system
In the center of this perfect storm sits the symbiotic relationship between pharmaceutical companies who make and market drugs and the physicians who prescribe their products.
In fact, medications were ordered or provided in over two-thirds of the 1.1 billion visits to physician offices. 1 Clearly, prescribing drugs is central to what physicians do. So one can quickly surmise that pharmaceutical companies couldn’t exist with prescribing physicians and physicians couldn’t provide the patient care we have all come to expect without the pharmaceutical companies.
To understand how critical the pharmaceutical-physician relationship is, just look at some of the numbers.
In 2008, domestic sales of pharmaceuticals and medicines totaled $189 billion. Pharmaceutical manufacturers spent at least $20.5 billion on promotional activities with about $16 billion of the total targeted to physicians, nurse practitioners, and physicians assistants. 2
Yet, the old model of physically sending pharmaceutical sales representatives to meet with physicians is simply not working as effectively as it once was.
As of late, obtaining access to busy physicians has grown even more difficult for pharmaceutical sales representatives.
- In 2009, as the number of physicians willing to see sales reps fell nearly 20 percent, the number of prescribers refusing to see sales reps increased by half
- The number of management-planned sales calls that were nearly impossible to complete topped 8 million
- Pharmaceutical companies spend a whopping $8,290 per doctor to get their sales reps in front of them3
Throughout all of this activity, there is a clear appreciation that technology can and should be employed to reduce costs, aid physicians in their education and information needs, speed healthcare delivery, improve access, increase safety, and improve patient outcomes. The good news is that physicians are adopting new technologies at an impressive rate.
Moreover, 89% of US physicians use the Internet to gather health, medical, or prescription drug information. Even more surprisingly, 21% said they did so with a patient in the examination room and 59% reported doing so from a mobile device. 4
In the area of electronic prescribing, Surescripts recently released their 2009 National Progress Report on ePrescribing. Highlights include:
- In 2009, approximately 18 percent of eligible prescriptions were prescribed electronically compared with just 6.6 percent in 2008
- The number of prescriptions routed electronically grew from 68 million in 2008 to 191 million in 2009
- The number of physicians routing prescriptions electronically grew from 74,000 at the end of 2008 to 156,000 by the end of 2009
- At the end of 2009, approximately 85 percent of community pharmacies and six of the largest mail-order pharmacies in the United States were able to receive prescriptions electronically
Even more change lies ahead. In 2012, physicians will use online resources more frequently and will reduce or eliminate their use of offline sources as the Internet becomes a primary rather than complimentary resource. A higher number of clinicians will perform a broader and more complex range of functions online, including on mobile devices. Professional social networks may well start to evolve into hubs of content, service, and connection. 5
The bond connecting physicians and pharmaceutical companies is as strong as ever and is not going away. However, in order to acknowledge the way in which technology is changing how physicians run their practices and provide care for their patients, pharmaceutical companies need to realign their sales and marketing practices to reflect these new realities. It can be a win-win-win scenario whereby physicians gain convenient, cost-effective access to the information and tools they need, pharmaceutical companies benefit from a value-added education/promotions approach reducing costs while increasing message delivery and patients reap the benefit of more informed, faster, and safer treatment.
That is the promise of technology in the new American healthcare landscape and it’s happening right now.
For more information on how Physicians Interactive’s new ePrescribing, Electronic Health Record (EHR), Mobile and other digital channels can help you reach physicians at more clinically relevant times, please call 800.794.6757 or email info@physiciansinteractive.com.
1 Center for Disease Control, 2006
2 Congressional Budget Office, 2010
3 ZS Associates, 2010
4 Hall & Partners, 2009 study
5 Manhattan Research 2010, v.10
