Clinical Homecare – are you tapping into the opportunities for your brand?

As the health service undergoes a period of sustained reform, there is little doubt that clinical homecare is set to play a pivotal role in the move towards a more patient-focused NHS.  This growing sector also creates the opportunity for some pharmaceutical companies to really differentiate their brands.

So what do we actually mean by the “Clinical Homecare Market”?  In fact, the breadth of Clinical Homecare  has altered significantly over time.  Whilst the market started out primarily as a logistics proposition around medicines delivery, the sector has grown considerably in the past decade.  It now involves a whole spectrum of services, skills and competencies that are designed to manage and support patients in their homes – patients that might otherwise be likely to be treated in secondary care or another clinical setting. 

What’s more, the subject of Homecare is increasingly under the microscope, especially with the DH asking Mark Hackett, CEO of Southampton University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, to undertake a comprehensive review of homecare medicines in November 2011.   This led to the publication of the report “Homecare Medicines, Towards a Vision for the Future” – which amongst other things, concluded that the industry needs to work with the NHS to invest in technology to develop the homecare medicines supply market.  

Furthermore, with the Nicholson challenge putting immense pressure on the health service to deliver efficiency savings, it is acknowledged that clinical homecare has the potential to make a huge contribution.  This market therefore creates the ideal opportunity for both the NHS and the Industry to work in partnership and realise benefits for all the key stakeholders – patients, the NHS and pharma.

For the NHS, service designs involving personalised services such as Homecare come with the additional benefits of being able to introduce services which deliver BOTH cost savings and quality improvements and may also lead to better patient compliance – whilst at the same time, also successfully addressing the capacity challenges facing many local health economies. 

From the patient perspective, the Quality of Life benefits are clear – from practical advantages such as less travel, reduction in clinic time…to ultimately greater independence.

Pharmaceutical Companies with products/portfolios in therapy areas that align well to homecare also stand to benefit.   There are clear opportunities to demonstrate true product differentiation and provide real competitive advantage – to maybe achieve accelerated product sales and more market penetration. 

So does your brand have a Value Proposition that could incorporate Homecare to help ensure patients adhere to their medication, and/or prevent hospital admissions, and/or support early discharge from hospital, and/or be more convenient for patients? 

If so, what do payers and policy makers and other key NHS stakeholders think about your homecare proposition?  In a prescribing environment rife with market access issues, can you afford to ignore this avenue?    Should you be digging deep to uncover key insights to drive your homecare strategy?

Homecare Medicines, Towards a Vision for the Future

In November 2010, the DH sponsored the CEO of Southampton University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, to lead a review of the homecare medicines market.   The findings of this review are report entitled “Homecare Medicines, Towards a Vision for the Future” can be found at the link below

http://cmu.dh.gov.uk/files/2011/12/111201-Homecare-Medicines-Towards-a-Vision-for-the-Future2.pdf

‘Doing the right thing’. Knowledge-Based Commissioning and the Right Care QIPP Agenda - are there implications for your own brand’s knowledge base?

Right Care is a new initiative and forms one of 13 national workstreams in the DH Quality, Innovation, Productivity and Prevention (QIPP) programme, which dominates NHS thinking at the present time.  This workstream, however, is arguably not as front of mind as it needs to be with the pharma industry.  Unlike many other QIPP workstreams, which are typically more focused on improving transactions in the NHS, the Right Care agenda focuses specifically on transformation to improve value in the NHS by doing the right things . ‘Well,’ you may ask, ‘why does this need to be ‘front of mind’ for the pharma industry?”

Essentially, Right Care is an enabling programme.  It seeks to address variation, and in particular, unwarranted variation in the NHS, through the design and promotion of health investment and analysis tools such as the NHS Atlas of Variation.  These tools are intended to help the NHS to understand regional variation in health spend and outcomes through local pilots and by promoting knowledge transfer.  

For example, the workstream’s  focus on programme budgeting and its related discipline of marginal analysis offers a way to help commissioners reflect on their priorities and maximise value from spend by improving the allocation of resources.

So the big question is…are the activities of the Right Care agenda relevant to pharma companies?  Do we actually need to know all about this workstream’s plans and initiatives – and to research their implications – and will being a bit more clued up help to engage more effectively with the NHS? 

Here is a little food for thought…..

Have you considered how you may need to adapt your brand strategies given the initiatives around the principle of ‘shared decision-making’ and the planned roll-out of tools for use by Clinical Commissioning Groups?   For example, what are the implications of the introduction of Online Patient Decision Aids for communication between patients and healthcare professionals?   What do you need to investigate about the potential usage in clinical practice of these tools in order to ensure that your brand can effectively  leverage future opportunities?

On another note, how are PCTs in England using the NHS Atlas to identify and act upon unwarranted regional variations in the quality of care?   Could your organisation do more to support actions which need to be taken at local level as a result of commissioners identifying an issue?  If so, what type of support would be of most value?

Likewise, how might your company most effectively leverage the principle of “Do Once and Share”?

And what about the possibility that Right Care’s plans may lead to the creation of Clinical Leads for a Population within single care systems – perhaps there will be implications for your company’s future targeting activities?

These are just a few examples of why we believe that YES, Right Care should be front of mind for pharma business intelligence professionals, and why moving forward it needs to be a key focus for market research.  What insights do you need to be able to effectively support the workstream’s initiative, and thus in turn be able to more effectively engage with the NHS?

For more information on the Right Care QIPP Workstream, click on www.rightcare.nhs.uk

The NHS Atlas of Variation

The NHS Atlas of Variation discussed in the Right Care blog can be found on the link below - this interactive tool can play an important role in analysing the regional variation across key indicators in England. Using scale ratings, alphabetical sorting and search by key indicator we think you will find this a very useful source for some initial information into Right Care initiatives.

http://www.sepho.org.uk/extras/maps/NHSatlas/atlas.html