In the pharmaceutical industry, patient support programs (PSPs) and brand teams often work in silos, despite their shared goal of helping patients achieve a certain health outcome. This division of labor is typical in complex and highly regulated industries, but departmental divides can come at a cost. These silos often act as a barrier to sharing important information and best practices.
When brand and PSPs teams work together as partners instead of in silos, it can produce more tightly aligned goals, objectives, and strategies for internal teams—and more streamlined and cohesive journeys for patients—from awareness all the way to adherence.
Different perspectives, same goal
There are many different divisions and roles across a pharmaceutical company that play a part in helping a patient start and stay with a treatment option to improve the patient’s health outcomes. Success is subject to a wide range of mitigating factors, but there is one ingredient that’s universal: trust. Pharma brands work diligently to win the trust of key stakeholders—namely patients, caregivers, and healthcare providers (HCPs).
Brand teams establish trust through careful awareness and retention initiatives. Through keen insights and careful positioning, brand teams expertly differentiate their product in the market and find the right opportunities to demonstrate their treatment’s unique value. On the other hand, PSPs earn trust by serving as a resource for their key stakeholders.
They become supportive extensions of the brand that work on a personalized level with patients and care teams, from the moment the prescription is written to other important points along the treatment journey. They promote access to therapy by helping eligible patients afford their medications. And with therapy underway, many of these programs help boost adherence¹ by addressing common barriers to compliance, like missed doses, side effects, and unreliable information about the drug and disease.²
This type of support and connection is what makes many PSPs such critical players in the building and maintaining of patient trust, both at the individual treatment level and from a more holistic perception of the brand. When patients feel a pharma brand is responsive to their needs and committed to improving their treatment experience, it reinforces that brand’s reputation as a partner in their healthcare journey.³
Brands and PSPs each have unique approaches and techniques for establishing and maintaining trust. To fully leverage the power of both, you must align their efforts. And one of the most impactful ways to do so is in the joint creation of a unified patient journey.
Co-create a more cohesive patient journey
Within a pharma company, brand and PSP teams are typically different units, each with specific purposes and ways of operating. But to patients, caregivers, and HCPs, they’re often perceived as a single entity. If that “one” brand is sending out overlapping or disjointed messaging, especially at the early stages of treatment, it can lead to problems. At best, these misalignments result in redundancy of communication. At worst, they can create confusion and become a potential barrier to patients starting or adhering to the therapy.
Designing a patient journey together presents an opportunity for brand and PSPs teams to co-create a singular patient experience that best supports the patient—and aligns with all internal stakeholder goals. Of course, integrating efforts will vary according to each pharma brand’s unique structure, but the benefit is universal: a more consistent, patient-centered platform to clearly demonstrate the brand’s value and commitment.
Here are a few areas where increased collaboration within the patient journeys can have a real impact:
Shared success metrics: Despite their different functions, brands and PSPs often have overlapping priorities. Identifying communal goals—and sharing how success in these areas is measured and achieved—allows both teams to be more intentional in their planning. Establishing which metrics to share can be simplified by bringing the two teams together and asking: “Where do our metrics complement each other? Where do they overlap? Where do they differ? What other measures do we need to complete a picture of patient success?” Defining what success means for each team and then looking for patterns and disconnection between the two can offer unique insights that help both teams carry out their duties while remaining patient-centric.
Shared expertise and data: Sharing metrics of success goes hand in hand with shared intelligence. Each team has unique insight when it comes to their common audiences. Creating clear and open lines of communication allows the pharma company to leverage different team perspectives as strengths.
For instance, PSPs’ expertise often lies in engagement and patient-centricity. As such, successful PSPs deeply understand their target audience and use this awareness to design initiatives and operations that resonate with the patient on a personalized level4.
Brand teams are experts in awareness and positioning. They’re adept at crafting specific messaging and communication plans, and know how to reach as many relevant stakeholders as possible. They also often have the knowledge and resources needed to develop omni channel campaigns, and ensure consistent branding to maintain a unified and recognizable brand identity.
When both teams have access to their colleagues’ unique skills, data, and knowledge, everyone can make more informed decisions on how to effectively communicate with a patient at any point in their therapy.
“If life were simple, patient journeys would be a perfectly straight line, starting with drug awareness and continuing directly through adherence, all in a nice, predictable cadence. But here in the real world, patient journeys aren’t always so linear.”
Shared communication plans: If life were simple, patient journeys would be a perfectly straight line, starting with drug awareness and continuing directly through adherence, all in a nice, predictable cadence.
But here in the real world, patient journeys aren’t always so linear. It’s not unusual for patients to start a therapy, stop it, and then start back up again. Or they can start, stop, and then return back to the beginning of the journey. During this time, they’re likely having different interactions with the therapy’s marketing, sometimes bouncing back and forth between brand and PSPs comms. Even straightforward interactions like the initial prescription can be cluttered with unnecessary overlap and misalignment.
For example, when a doctor prescribes a new therapy, they often provide the patient or caregiver with materials about the treatment. In some cases, that material may be created by brand teams. Other times, it might be the PSPs. It’s not unheard of to have patients receive materials from both teams simultaneously, with no guarantee of consistency in messaging and tone.
The reality is patient communications are complex and multifaceted. This is why getting brand teams and PSPs to co-develop a communication plan for patient experiences can be so valuable. Creating internal alignment around the patient’s journey can help cut some of these problems off at the pass, alleviating potential internal ambiguity around which team is doing what, when, and why. It can also optimize the patient experience with increased clarity and a smoother onboarding experience, which has been linked to better therapy adherence5.
Two workstreams. One team. More trust.
When brands and PSPs teams work in silos, their disconnect isn’t just felt internally. It can have a real impact on the external perception of the brand. To patients, caregivers, and healthcare providers, the teams that communicate on behalf of a drug represent a single group, and any inconsistency in communication can create confusion and undermine trust. Ensuring internal alignment by strategically integrating PSPs into brand plans—and vice versa—can help make the entire treatment journey more patient-centric and consistent, which offers tangible value to patients, providers, and pharmaceutical companies alike.
Sources
1. Brixner D, Rubin DT, Mease P, et al. Patient Support Program Increased Medication Adherence with Lower Total Health Care Costs Despite Increased Drug Spending. J Manag Care Spec Pharm. 2019;25(7):770-779. doi:10.18553/jmcp.2019.18443
2. Devine F, Edwards T, Feldman SR. Barriers to Treatment: Describing Them From a Different Perspective. Patient Prefer Adherence. 2018;12:129-133. Published 2018 Jan 17. doi:10.2147/
PPA.S147420
3. Wei-Jiao Zhou, Qiao-Qin Wan, Cong-Ying Liu, Xiao-Lin Feng, Shao-Mei Shang, Determinants of Patient Loyalty to Healthcare Providers: An Integrative Review, International Journal for Quality in Health Care, Volume 29, Issue 4, August 2017, Pages 442–449, https://doi.org/10.1093/intqhc/mzx058
4. Sculpting Seamless Patient Experiences: Five hallmarks of a highly effective patient support program
5. Holland L, Nelson ML, Westrich K, Campbell PJ, Pickering MK. The patient’s medication access journey: a conceptual framework focused beyond adherence. JManag Care Spec Pharm. 2021;27(12):1627-1635. doi:10.18553/jmcp.2021.27.12.1627