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.

Here’s a MedSpan Research tip!

Clinical pharmacists are a good deal for drug companies’ market research. Consider clinical pharmacists as respondents when needing clinical insights regarding a new drug. Remember that health plan and some hospital-based clinical pharmacists specialize by drug class. Other hospital-based clinical pharmacists specialize by patient care unit (e.g., emergency department, ICU).

What can a well-defined brand do for you?

If there could be only one reason a well-defined brand is critical to your marketing efforts, it’s in this quote from author Seth Godin:

“If you’ve never heard of it, if you wouldn’t choose it, if you don’t recommend it, then there is no brand, at least not for you.” – Seth Godin, bestselling author of “Tribe”

In this week’s post, we’ll take a look at how brand awareness and perceptions research can help you better define your company’s brand and gain an edge over your competitors.

Even your business’ name is a key part of niche marketing

Niche marketing is a key marketing concept in the healthcare industry. Targeting one’s products or services can enhance overall success rather than limiting revenue potential. One of the foundations for successful niche marketing is a proper name for a new business or product. Learn how one of MedSpan’s clients addressed this fundamental need.

The Adult Disposable Brief Market — Opportunities for differentiation

This brief study indicates that there are opportunities to improve the designs of adult disposable briefs to differentiate each brand from its competition. Such differentiation could encourage nursing homes to switch their preferred brand of adult disposable briefs even though brand loyalty is high.