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access strategy and source of business in the healthcare industry

  • Blog
  • Barri M. Blauvelt, CEO
There is a lot of emphasis now in the healthcare industry on the word “access”, e.g. creating access, maintain access and crafting access strategies. It slowly crept into our language starting with the new millennium. This decade, “access” is THE buzzword. “Access” is NOT something that you will not find in text books because it has really been the domain of commercialization strategy in the industry for the last three years. Access is fundamentally who holds the money, because who holds the money holds the power.

In any industry, companies want and need access to the decision making process, to be part of the equation when a decision to purchase or reimburse is made. In the healthcare industry, whether you are talking about governments and pricing, institutions, insurers, or payers, a company has to be able to access the value of the market, commercially. That is why access strategy is clearly a driver within commercialization strategy. Simply put, a company cannot have a commercialization strategy without having an access strategy. Ironically, this also is true of institutions and even governments…everyone… needs to know – where is the money going to come from and who holds the keys to access those funds?

The other term that is evolving in the healthcare industry is “source of business”. So what is the source of business? Source of business identifies where the business is going to come from. In the old days we call that segmentation and targeting; today we add ‘access’ to customer algorithms and ask, “What’s our source of business?” And again, even healthcare institutions, governments, insurers need to understand their sources of business.

Within access strategy, the first and most important thing is identifying the sources of business. Companies then should build their access strategy around those sources of business.

The next “Achilles heel” that I see in a lot of plans with access strategies is the lack of specificity. To say, “government” or “insurers” does not come close. Who and what within these sources of business holds the keys, how does the company plan to unlock the door to access?

A robust business or brand plan then links these two critical pieces of the marketing process together, making sure that “source(s) of business” go hand in hand with “access strategies” with enough clarity of detail that the implementers of the plan – from high level executives cutting the big deal, down to sales reps and communications managers helping to create ground level demand and sharing information with users and prescribers about how they also can access their own systems to ensure that their patients get the best care with the best products.