MedSpan Musings — Tips for better market research

MedSpan Musing

Using Adaptive Recruiting Techniques

 

It is not always clear who the most appropriate respondents are for a study. For example, it might not be clear at the onset of a project which hospital executives are responsible for evaluating and selecting a complex patient care program.

For these situations, use an adaptive recruiting technique. Conduct a short Internet survey or phone interview with a few respondents to identify who is responsible for the decisions you are researching.

If you know one job title of interest, you can incorporate the questions for identifying the complete set of decision makers into the main survey instrument. If the appropriate decision makers are completely unknown, identifying the correct decision makers can be a separate exercise.

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Market research — A competitive differentiator

Market research data are typically used to inform product design, marketing strategies and tactics. Sometimes, the data are the end goal. The data can be used to develop a competitive differentiation and deliver value to customers.

MedSpan Musings — Tips for better market research

When conducting market research with the hospital pharmacy department, ensure that the right section is informing your actions.

While some hospital pharmacies limit their scope of practice to their individual hospital, others are responsible for the purchasing and management of drug therapies throughout the integrated delivery system.

• Pharmacy directors — Sets policy for operations, contracting, inventory management, and intra-delivery system distribution. The pharmacy director typical is a voting member of the P&T Committee, thereby influencing product selection.The pharmacy director tends to be the most knowledgeable among his or her staff regarding billing, coding and reimbursement for drug therapy. However, in our experience, the level of expertise in these areas varies between hospital pharmacy directors.

  Integrated delivery systems may have one pharmacy director for inpatient care and another for outpatient care. They report to a Vice President of Pharmacy. Standalone hospitals tend to have one pharmacy director.

• Clinical pharmacists — Are often stationed throughout the hospital. Share drug insights with other clinicians. Develop drug monographs for the P&T Committee. Each clinical pharmacist specializes in one or more disease categories (e.g., cardiovascular disease) or hospital patient care unit (e.g., emergency medicine).
• IV operations managers — Oversees compounding processes and clean rooms. IV operations managers are important respondents for studies involving IV therapies.
• Pharmacy buyers — Work directly with wholesalers and drug companies to execute the delivery system’s day-to-day buying practices.

Payer 101: The respondents you need for your payer market research study

At MedSpan Research, we’re proud of the expertise we’ve gained over the past 17 years in an important but not well understood sector of the healthcare industry: payers. Today, we’ll continue with the Payer 101 series that we started in September by covering the key types of payer respondents to include in your next payer market research study.

To recap, the term ‘payer’ is broadly defined as any entity that reimburses the use of healthcare services or products. The term commonly refers to health insurance companies (otherwise known as health plans) as a whole, or to a key decision-maker at a health plan, such as a medical director. In the first post in our Payer 101 series, we focused on the former definition. In this second part of our series, we’ll go into more detail about the latter.

MedSpan Musings — Tips for better market research

Assessing the role of cost in
hospital product purchasing
and utilization

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Market Research Tip

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Often, manufacturers of medical devices seek to understand the role of cost in the value analysis committee’s decision to approve and utilize their products. To address these question, gather the perspectives of:

• Department managers
  • Director of Surgical Services, ED or GI Lab, etc.
  • These administrators typically have a nursing background
• Department medical directors
• Purchasing
• Physician champions (physician preference items only)
• Nurses or other allied health professionals who use the product