Digitizing pharma’s pivot to payer marketing

"Pharmas are using Blockbuster Era tactics to engage Digital Age payers

Twenty years ago, when Yahoo! was still the biggest fish in the primordial soup of the Internet and the FDA had only just approved the first TV drug ads, the drugs were cheaper and medical reimbursement was simpler. Pharmas promoted their products to physicians, who prescribed the relatively inexpensive drugs of the day - branded PPIs or antidepressants, etc. - and insurers mostly paid. But since the turn of the millennium, as mass-market blockbuster drugs gave way to pricey specialty drugs and biologics, things got more complicated. A steep decade-long rise in healthcare costs, fed in part by wave after wave of breakthrough therapies, contributed to the urgency around healthcare reform. The resulting legislation, the Affordable Care Act, put pressure on healthcare players to mitigate costs while delivering better quality care. This has shifted the balance of prescribing power from physicians (and patients) to payers, as formularies have become more restrictive – just 16% of U.S. physicians now say they always prescribe their first choice treatment, with the other 84% reporting that they usually or always follow formulary guidelines, per Manhattan Research's Taking the Pulse® 2017 study..." Lire la suite