Consider the following excerpt from a recent
PricewaterhouseCoopers paper entitled, Pharma 2020: The vision:
"For each additional dollar spent on prescription
treatments, the cost of caring for patients with
diabetes was reduced by $7, that of caring for
patients with high cholesterol was reduced by $5.10
and that of caring for patients with high blood
pressure by $3.98"
How much would all this increased compliance
be worth to our industry?
That's not a typo… Thirty billion
dollars a year in additional sales.
Frankly, it's
more than a little bit shocking. We've got
mountains of evidence like this in support of the fact
that improved compliance leads to better patient
outcomes, reduced health care costs, and improved
Pharma profits, and yet as an industry, we
continue to
backburner programs which tie the pieces together
and make compliance a reality.
In addition, consumers believe that we downplay
drug side effects, and treat fair balance as an
afterthought, which contributes to the further dilution
of whatever remaining trust the public has in us.
With that in mind, today's newsletter describes a case
study — a success story — in the
area of compliance. The program I'm going to tell
you about was easy on the docs, up front with the
patients, and among other things, resulted in a 71%
average persistency rate after six months.
For this large-scale program, we partnered with a
major drug manufacturer to improve compliance
regarding its cholesterol management product.
Nearly 9,000 physicians and more than 35,000 of
their patients participated in this two-year study.
A simple problem
In a nutshell, the cholesterol drug in question worked
just as it should. The problem, however, was that
the almost inevitable side effect of its usage was
flushing (i.e. tingling, redness in the face, a
sudden warm feeling all over).
When the flushing occurred, the patients — the
vast majority of whom were over age 45 and
all of whom were already diagnosed with high
cholesterol — thought they were experiencing
a serious medical event, perhaps even a heart attack.
Many either contacted their doctors in the middle of
the night in a panic, or simply discontinued use of the
drug entirely.
As you might guess, drop off rates for this drug
were particularly high, and indeed, typically fell in the
70–80% range.
A simple solution
The intent of the program was education —
and as early as possible in the process.
Before patients even took their first pill.
To ensure early education regarding the drug, we
set up a voucher program offering patients a free,
30-day supply of the medication itself, provided they
called a special phone number to register. The
10-minute recording talked about possible drug side
effects and offered some simple solutions (e.g. don't
eat spicy foods, take the pill just before bed so that if
flushing occurs it will happen while you're sleeping).
At the end of the call, we explained how to activate
the voucher.
Over the next six months, we stayed in touch with
patients (roughly monthly) via U.S. mail, sending
program reminders and educational information
about cholesterol and compliance with treatment. We
even sent a healthy eating cookbook at the end of the
program.
At the same time, treating physicians received reports
summarizing the responses of all the participating
patients from their practice.
Tangible results
In the end, the results spoke for themselves:
- After six months, more than 95% of patients
responded that they were taking their medication "all"
or "nearly all" the time. This represented a 71%
improvement in product persistency.
- About 95% of patients agreed that the program
information was helpful in informing patients of how
to manage their flushing and in improving HDL/LDL
levels.
- More than 98% of participants reported that the
program would be helpful for others.
Here's the bottom line. Thanks to this simple,
forthright, treatment education program, there was a
significant improvement in patient compliance, the
doctors involved had a nearly real-time feedback
loop into patient behavior, and the drug company
itself sold considerably more prescriptions than it
would have otherwise.
Is early, ongoing, honest patient education the future
of effective drug usage? Again,
PricewaterhouseCoopers: "… we believe that
by 2020, personalized monitoring will be a standard
feature of the packages many pharmaceutical
companies provide."
I couldn't agree more. Although as this case study
clearly demonstrates, for those who want to take
advantage of it, the future is already here.
(Do you agree? Click here now to tell me
why.)
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