There's no question that the COVID-19 pandemic is disrupting almost every aspect of our daily work and personal lives. That disruption can allow the life sciences industry to "take a left turn," changing – for the better – how we conduct certain aspects of business after the crisis has passed. Access is an area that may benefit from companies having hit the pause button.
Traditionally, many companies have aligned the staffing model for access teams (National Account Managers (NAMs), Key Account Managers (KAMs), and Field Reimbursement Managers (FRMs)) with their sales force. It is an approach that should now be re-examined.
The impact of COVID-19 on access functions
Like other teams operating during the COVID-19 pandemic, access teams have been interacting with their stakeholders via virtual meeting platforms. Perhaps surprisingly, this lack of in-person, face-to-face engagement has had little negative impact on those teams' ability to do their jobs and meet their goals. Why? Because access teams have primarily operated remotely for years.
With concerns about field team safety, productivity, and various other COVID-19-related pressures, many life sciences companies furloughed their access teams early in the pandemic. Having gone through this process, companies should now take this opportunity to reconsider their whole access staffing approach.
An opportunity to optimize
Several key observations that suggest the need for a fresh approach to staffing access teams:
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When companies staff their own internal functions, they usually do so with the launch workload in mind. Eventually, when activities naturally reduce after access is established, the access teams are typically underutilized. This includes National Account Managers (NAMs), Key Account Managers (KAMs) roles, and to a lesser extent, the Reimbursement roles. Ultimately, the staffing exceeds the need.
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NAM/KAM Deeper Dive:
NAMs and KAMs are most likely to hold in-person, face-to-face meetings with payers during a product's launch phase and then move to virtual meetings post-launch. As contracts are established and relationships move to a "maintenance phase" post-launch, the 'in-person' demands of the job drop off considerably. It is not a stretch to say that access professionals should be working themselves out of a job - meaning that the more successful they are at securing the right contracts, the less they themselves will be needed over time. Unless a company has a very large portfolio, the NAM looks to fill 40 hours a week, post-launch.
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FRM Deeper Dive:
At launch, Field Reimbursement Managers (FRMs) typically engage in-person with physician offices almost 100 percent of the time. Proactive educational training ensures correct and complete patient engagement intake forms and reimbursement information required to submit claims and establish a stable reimbursement path. After these initial in-services, however, much of the work moves to remote/virtual support with the billing departments and practice managers.
- Typically, access teams are structured to align with the sales teams. Those linkages are often presumptive and result in over-staffing, particularly as target organizations have undergone dramatic consolidation in the past five years.
- Companies strive to have their access teams distributed geographically – a need that wanes post-launch when most business can be conducted remotely.
The key takeaway:
The way that many companies are staffing their access teams is out of sync with the realities in the field. These staffing practices, which have been established for decades, are the source of substantial, unnecessary costs.
Adopt Best-Practices Approach
One solution is to turn to a Contract Sales Organization to staff access functions rather than continuing to invest in a model consisting of permanent, full-time, in-house employees. When the function is outsourced, staffing can be optimized on a calendar phase process.
Outsourced access teams can be deployed in syndicated (or shared), dedicated or hybrid resourcing, which can be scaled up or down as the need dictates. With flexibility and ongoing program optimization informed with key market data, companies' staffing investments are matched to their staffing needs, even as they change. Ultimately, this is more cost efficient; relying on outsourced NAM, KAM or Reimbursement teams can save hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
Remember, virtual calls are working well for access teams during the pandemic – just as they had been prior to the arrival of COVID-19.
If you're interested in learning how IQVIA could optimize your approach to access staffing, contact IQVIA here.