MME helps clients understand how to identify, frame, communicate and capture product value. We advise our customers on how to strategically navigate the pricing, reimbursement and market access (PRMA) environment. With over 20 years consulting in biopharmaceuticals and healthcare, let MME help you Learn from our experience and Profit from our thinking.
MME has developed several useful tools to help our clients navigate the dynamic and often confusing waters of the health care systems throughout a product’s life cycle. Because pricing and reimbursement do not exist in a vacuum, we develop strategies across all major markets of interest that are consistent with overall product and corporate goals.
A critical event for a new product is selecting a price and pricing strategy. Our proven Pricing Strategy Assessment (PSA) helps navigate the country and site of care specific issues germane to PRMA. The PSA considers an existing product strategy and corporate plans and then factors in the other elements of pharmaceutical pricing including competition, value, reimbursement environment, decision making criteria, disease and patient characteristics, and the public policy environment. MME designs custom primary and secondary research to answer specific strategic PRMA questions in the PSA.
Our process provides a “road map” of the marketplace, highlighting the issues, obstacles, and critical success factors to enter the market in the most profitable manner. MME provides specific recommendations as to overall pricing strategy, gross-to-net plans, and contracting plans.
Whether a client is preparing for the launch of its own new product, the launch of a significant competitor, or some other major event in the marketplace, the number and types of questions that usually go unanswered are numerous and costly to the client. The uncertainty of major changes in the marketplace can be reduced by clients that use the right process to manage them.
The CES was developed by MME to be a more realistic and useful approach to dealing with competitive situations than the typical “war game” approaches, which inevitably develop an atmosphere and attitude that is “win/lose,” treating every competitive situation as a zero-sum game. In a CES, participants learn to manage competitive situations, to maximize profitability, and to limit the potential damage from dysfunctional competitive activities. An important outcome of conducting a CES is that the participants come to better understand their customers, their competitors, and their own capabilities in the marketplace.
After conducting the CES exercise we compile the results and present them with clear guidance for the team, identifying key milestones, and market events that should trigger the implementation of actions and strategic adjustments to plans.
When issues to be explored require projecting “unknown” future market events, advisory boards and payer panels are often more fruitful in discussing the relevant issues since they allow room to “challenge as we go”.
MME regularly conducts payer/KOL advisory boards in order to:
The proprietary MME Payer Panels enable objective and rapid insights from current and former payer leaders in both the US and other core markets.
MME conducts payer/KOL advisory boards in order to:
MME regularly conducts EU payer advisory boards in order to:
Our proprietary payer panels in both the US and Ex-US core markets consist of current and former members of committees responsible for assessing clinical and economic value of therapies and negotiating prices at national and regional levels. MME connects with our “peer to peer” panels on a regular basis; therefore, members are quick to respond to engagement invitations.
Our team of highly trained professionals has significant experience conducting rigorous industry as well as academic research. MME uses research techniques that help obtain reliable “real-world” information to be used in decision-making processes that may affect your product’s adoption and performance. The goal of our research is to generate the necessary answers to drive strategic decisions, and not to attempt to fit the assessment of the world to a particular research method.
MME routinely conducts qualitative studies to determine the market potential for new products, the actual uses of current products and the ways in which these products are evaluated. Target respondents include payers, physicians, nurses, retail and hospital pharmacists, hospital and medical practice administrators, consumers and others who may be critical to decision-making for biopharmaceutical products. As with our quantitative research, we seek to do more than provide answers, we help clients determine the proper questions and use the results of our work to provide strategic guidance.
MME believes that it is the interaction of patient, physician, pharmacist, and other healthcare professionals that results in the ultimate response to the value of product offerings and their costs. Developing research that models these effects and predicts market-wide behavior is the foundation of MME’s quantitative pricing research.
MME uses quantitative research to identify and predict behavior of specific target segments to define and characterize the response of market decision makers to various factors (among them price, reimbursement status, competition, and variants in product profile); to understand patient flow through the healthcare system; and to determine responses to promotion, product, and price differences.
Although we can, and often do, incorporate multiple methods, when appropriate, we discourage the overuse of the traditional “one size fits all” conjoint or choice models because research has shown that, while the results are usually precise, they are often precisely wrong.
MME excels at the appropriate and efficient analysis of secondary information from multiple sources. Our analytical skills in this regard are unrivaled for the development of forecasts, explanatory models, and market assessments. Our analyses of secondary data have been used by clients to plan at every life-cycle stage, from product launches to patent loss, and to understand the effect of marketing inputs on the sales of products in specific categories to understand the dynamics in multiple pharmaceutical markets.
Using client provided data, such as market and prescription audits or other research, or our own extensive data bases and sources, we assure that the information used as the basis of decisions is founded in fact, not assumptions. Whether the source is commercial data bases of market information such as prescriptions and promotion, prices, or reimbursement status, or “library sources” such as reviews of the medical or business literature, we combine this information with our own experience and insights to assure that our clients see and consider the full picture, not just a market snapshot.
MME routinely supports clients in efforts to implement market access strategies through activities focused on tactical pricing guidelines, policies and practices designed to foster profitable net pricing, achieve desired access, and deliver targeted messages to segmented payers and providers. In addition, support often includes adjusting pricing policies and practices which range from formation of pricing committees to criteria for business cases and contract case review.
Pricing is a process, not an event, and it is essential that a company has developed specific processes and standards for setting and managing prices and associated strategies. MME assists clients in developing and implementing processes and structures to ensure that prices are set and managed appropriately, within and across countries.
MME has developed several tools and concepts to help clients develop the processes and structures needed to address their pricing needs. In addition to providing training in all the aspects of pricing and price management, our tools and concepts help bring order to the complex world of price management.
Contracting is a vital tactical pricing tool – it is a principle way in which pricing strategies are implemented. Our support offerings in this area cover design, analysis, segmentation, evaluation, and process reviews of contracts. Our work results in actionable and sustainable tactical programs that meet both corporate and customer objectives for all commercial and government segments.
We also perform comprehensive audits of the contracting area, evaluating the contract offers, performance, process and consistency with stated product goals.
MME has in-depth knowledge and broad experience in mandated government contracting and price reporting. MME’s seasoned professionals understand the government contract and pricing requirements and have first-hand experience dealing with corporate integrity agreements. Errors and oversights in mandatory price calculations and reports can be costly and time consuming, and MME can help clients to avoid delays and expenses by applying our experience and insights to this important area.
