Shared Goal of Better Health Outcomes Drives Coupon, Voucher & eSampling Marketing Model
Healthcare Providers and Pharma Marketers alike Strive for Increased Patient Compliance
Increasingly high healthcare costs, the shifting burden of out-of-pocket expenses to patients, and the growing physician shortage add up to a prescription for a public health disaster. In an attempt to save money, patients are postponing medical care, foregoing preventative treatment, and delaying filling prescription medications. This in turn leads to disease progression, more hospitalizations and still more medical costs.
“We need to give everyone the tools to make the smartest, healthiest choices about their diet, physical activity, and environment,” said Secretary Kathleen Sebelius at the December 7 Institute for Healthcare Improvement National Forum. “Rising healthcare costs are putting a bigger and bigger burden on families, businesses and government at every level.”
Healthcare providers (HCPs) are searching for ways to provide better healthcare outcomes for their patients in this strained environment – one way being to increase a patient’s days-on-therapy, or compliance.
To increase patient compliance, pharmaceutical marketers often provide physical drug samples as “starter medication”, distributed via sales reps or online using eSampling. Along with samples, many pharmaceutical companies also offer vouchers, coupons and loyalty cards to mitigate the costs of HCP-prescribed treatments and distribute them through sales representatives and online.
The use of vouchers, coupons and other types of co-pay offers provided by pharmaceutical marketers has grown in popularity over the last few years. In fact 18% of physicians believe that access to coupons help them make better healthcare decisions1. By streamlining the prescribing process and integrating the availability and distribution of vouchers and co-pays, physicians find benefits in:
Medical Freedom: When cost is taken out of the prescription process at the point of care, HCPs can focus on which drug is best for their patient medically, not just economically. Additionally, HCPs may be more willing to prescribe new medications that they have previously never prescribed.
Ease of Management: Medical practices can print coupons and vouchers on demand at the point of care.
Yet, there are measurable benefits for pharmaceutical marketers too.
Coupons and vouchers are ideal for prescribers who no longer accept and dispense samples or hard-to-access HCPs who live in remote areas.
As coupons and vouchers are redeemed at the pharmacy, data is stored and collected by companies who provide this information back to HCPs, pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies. These tracking systems, also called pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) compile data including patient info, physician’s name, usage and dosage. This comprehensive system allows for a clear return on investment (ROI) measurement and can provide transparent marketing information such as impact on market share and territory mapping.
Physicians Interactive, the leading digital sales and marketing partner of life science companies, provides healthcare professionals a solution that allows for more efficient ways to search, select and distribute sample vouchers, prescription co-pay coupons and other support information directly from their desktops.
For more information on Physicians Interactive’s eSampling and voucher/coupon solutions, please call 800.794.6757 or email info@physiciansinteractive.com.
1 Epsilon, “A Prescription for Customer Engagement”, April 2010
