Are you being bombarded by emails and information from every angle every day? Payer medical directors are, too. The same cultural phenomenon that is affecting you is affecting them. Since the early 2000s, it has been more and more difficult to get the attention of payers with new technologies to tell the story of your technology and product. When you present your technology, your time will be limited. Furthermore, payer medical directors are under increasing pressure to manage behemoth pharmaceutical benefits formularies and complicated genetic therapy coverage.
With Argenta’s Medical Director focus groups or interviews, you can learn how to sharpen your case for medical policy coverage and make sure you will get the attention you deserve. For the eight reasons below, medical director focus groups (formerly called medical director advisory boards) are a sound investment.
1. A medical director focus group can help gather market data from a key customer group: payers.
Most of the healthcare purchasing decisions in the US market are made by some combination of patient, provider, and payer (health insurer). While most manufacturers have conducted patient and provider research during the product development process, many fail to conduct the same research with payers. A focus group provides you an opportunity to hear the factors that will influence the decision to purchase your product. The assumption that payer decisions are based purely upon clinical data and economics without context can cause a seemingly sure thing to fail. If you build it, they won’t always come. Don’t speculate about how much and what kind of data is needed for your product: work with Argenta and find out.
2. The best way to test payer messaging is with payer medical directors.
Securing coverage and payment for your product first requires getting the attention of the decision-makers. Payer medical directors are under constant demand to provide high quality care for the least amount of money. They want to pay for care that will help their members stay or become healthy, but they have a budget to consider. They are also under constant pursuit by innumerable vendors, all with messages about how their product can change the world. Are you confident that your value messaging will cut through the noise and garner the time and attention it takes to receive a thorough review?
3. Confidently go to market after receiving an honest assessment of the viability of your product.
Don’t test your commercialization and reimbursement theory in the field! The best time to test your market strategy is before you have invested your time, talent, and treasure. Commercialization of new and innovative medical technology is expensive and is not a do-no-harm proposition. Failed commercialization strategies and methods can create precedents that are difficult to overcome and can mire a technology indefinitely. Argenta’s medical director focus groups are double blinded to provide manufacturers the opportunity to test their product’s messaging and value proposition in a blinded no-harm-no-foul environment. Finding problems with your commercialization or reimbursement strategy through a focus group instead of in the field is comparable to the difference between a bench failure and failure in a pivotal trial. With Argenta’s help, you can ensure the highest likelihood of success.
4. Discover opportunities to pivot for success before strategic gaps become critical failure points.
Finding pivot points and opportunities to adjust strategies is limited in a simple survey or one-on-one call with a payer. Although surveys and medical director discussions can be helpful in specific circumstances, the dynamic environment of a focus group creates interactions among the medical directors that raise points and issues that are nearly impossible to discover in other test environments. Often manufacturers discover unanticipated issues with their commercial strategies at medical director focus groups. Focus groups make it possible to redevelop lines of questioning on the fly and discover opportunities to revise strategies that increase the likelihood of successfully securing coverage for your product.
5. Gain insight into the payer policy development process from a spectrum of payers.
Unless you have worked within a payer organization, you can only speculate about the payer policy process. Most of the information available to manufacturers regarding the medical policy development process is secondhand hearsay. If your organization is lucky enough to have had meetings with a payer about your technology, then you may have a good sense about one payer. But each payer is subject to different economic forces and may have varying
clinical evidentiary requirements. All
payers have different motivators, processes, and procedures
for creating medical policy. Working with a diverse group of payer medical directors in a focus group setting will highlight many of these differences and give you the insight you need to create a robust approach.
6. Elevate your in-house reimbursement staff by exposing them to insider knowledge.
Argenta will invite your reimbursement team to the focus group as blinded participants and prior to the focus group we will work with them to think critically about reimbursement challenges and opportunities, to maximize the focus group’s time. At the focus group, they will have the opportunity to hear payer medical directors relate experiences with comparable technologies and how medical policy was created for those products. Each focus group includes multiple medical directors, exposing your reimbursement team to multiple insights and points of view. Historically, Argenta’s focus groups have comprised some of the most experienced active medical directors in the industry, each of them bringing decades of experience in policy development and review.
7. Create a foundation for a methodical reimbursement and commercialization strategy.
Medical devices and biologics are developed through sound, well-defined scientific processes—and so should reimbursement and commercialization strategy. Argenta recommends that clients develop a draft reimbursement strategy and then test it. Medical director focus groups are an important tool for receiving valuable feedback on draft plans for payer messaging and the probable impact of existing and planned clinical data and publications strategies. The creation of clinical data is expensive. Before spending the money on more data, make sure that the data you are planning to collect is the right data. A methodical approach to your commercialization strategy is just as important as a methodical approach to product development.
8. The interplay among medical directors in a focus group yields far more information than one-on-one interviews.
While medical director surveys or calls may be less expensive than doing a panel with a focus group, they are no substitute for the interaction and interplay that takes place among the members of an in-person medical director focus group. Argenta uses experienced moderators who are also former medical directors. Our moderators help create an environment where the panelists feel comfortable enough to challenge the product value story and challenge each other to dig for deeper insights.
Life science technology is tested before we rely on it: your strategy and messaging should be tested the same way. Medical director focus groups (advisory boards) allow manufacturers to test messaging and strategy in a safe place and learn things about their product’s pathway that may not have been apparent. Best yet, the panels don’t just find problems: they often recommend solutions. Don’t wait for the market to teach you the adjustments your products need to go forward.
There is only a limited number of focus group dates available each year.
