The Role of Medical Affairs in Payer Interactions: Training, Segmentation, and Staffing

STUDY OVERVIEW

Payers drive so much revenue for pharmaceutical companies that the industry recognizes the importance of creating and maintaining effective relationships with the payer community. A key aspect of those relationships revolves around providing health outcomes information. The medical affairs function has long been involved in the dissemination of medical information to external stakeholders so, not surprisingly, many pharma companies have turned to this function to aid in payer interactions.

However, medical affairs organizations often face challenges in executing effective payer interactions and maintaining appropriately sized and trained field groups for payer engagement and market access activities.

Best Practices, LLC undertook this benchmarking study to understand the role of medical affairs in critical payer interactions and to highlight strategies for building and maintaining effective relationships with payers. In particular, this study provides benchmarks around payer segmentation and prioritization as well as the optimal field force levels, talent and training for ensuring effective payer relationships.

This study includes segments for large and small companies and US only and global.


KEY TOPICS

• Talent Background and Training
• Knowledge Sharing
• Payer Segmentation and Prioritization
• Medical Affairs and Payer Resource Ratios
  
  

• Effectiveness of staff’s educational backgrounds for payer services
• Effectiveness of staff’s experiences for payer services
• Necessary qualifications for success in payer communication
• Scope of training for Medical Affairs employees serving payers
• Critical success factors for strong communication with payers
• Knowledge sharing via an internal group
• Collaboration of Medical Affairs group with supporting functions that directly interact with payers
• Knowledge sharing channels and their effectiveness
• Collaboration with field-based teams
• Effectiveness of segmenting payers by listed criteria and strategies
• Importance of different influencers/payers on market access
• Medical Affairs spend as percentage of total revenue
• Medical Affairs spend per Medical Affairs FTE
• Payer staff as percentage of total Medical Affairs employees
  

• Training the Talent: Scientific information and communicating real world data are among the top training areas for payer-oriented staff. While 67% of the participants design structured trainings on scientific information, 59% do so on translating real world evidence into effective messages.
• Regardless of company size, training on scientific data, regulations and compliance are critical for pharma. However, larger companies have a more focus on training that brings a business approach into perspective. For example, training on communication and business understanding is as important for larger companies as training on scientific, regulatory and compliance information.

This study reflects the data of 29 survey responses from Medical Affairs leaders at 27 biopharmaceutical companies.

Industries Profiled:
Pharmaceutical; Biopharmaceutical; Biotech; Manufacturing; Chemical; Health Care


Companies Profiled:
Abbvie; Alkermes; AstraZeneca; Baxalta; Biogen; CSL Behring; Daiichi Sankyo; EMD Serono; Genentech; Genomic Health; Lundbeck; Incyte; Janssen; Medivation; Mesoblast; Novartis; Pacira Pharmaceuticals; Pfizer; Pharmacyclics; ProStrakan; Santen; Servier; Shire; Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd; Upsher-Smith; ViiV Healthcare

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