"The Times they are A-Changin'"

A few years ago, we did the most sensible thing ever, after rearing four girls to teenage status and beyond and gaining a bit of free time we decided it was time to get a puppy.

Wow, that was a learning curve, he refused to sleep in his crate and whimpered and whined all night. I mean… all night. We would take it in turns to go see him and cuddle him and we tried the harsh love of leaving him until he would cry himself to sleep.

I remember thinking it reminded me of something…

Anyhow after five nights of broken/non-existent sleep we gave in and he slept where he wanted. He had “won” and we had “lost”.

Also those promises of “don’t worry we will get up before school and take him out for a walk” disappeared within days of him being able to go out after his vaccinations…

What’s that got to do with the Pharmaceutical Industry and Dispensing Doctors?

Well, it got me thinking about the whole concept of organizational change, as a family we had to adapt to a new situation, and worst of all, that dreaded concept of change. This event coincided with me reading an article which discusses the whole issue of change and is aimed mainly at GP practices in primary care.

As human beings we don’t like change, do we? Changing bank account, changing mortgage provider, changing supermarkets, changing our personal viewing habits; all are things we only really do if we are forced to.

But what factors change organizational behaviour in a dispensing doctor practice?

There are quite a few areas where dispensing practices could look at minor organizational change in order to increase efficiency or to improve dispensary income such as changing wholesaler, bulk ordering their top 50 generic lines, looking to use Parallel Imports where there is no UK discount scheme or simply giving the dispensary manager the support they need to concentrate on the business of running a dispensary and not just being a lead dispenser. There may be other things to look at such as automation in the dispensary or potential software packages and online ordering to speed up the ordering process or automated ordering via EMIS for example.

But how does the pharmaceutical industry look to initiate change in their customers’ behaviour and more importantly prescribing and dispensing practice.

Well firstly the customer [dispensing doctor] needs to be made aware of the possible alternatives to their current buying and prescribing choices. And this can be achieved via advertising, direct mailing, ebulletin, telesales and a face-to-face visit from a representative of the company. From a business point of view the mantra is always “return on investment” and pharma wants to achieve the best possible results at the lowest possible cost – which makes complete sense.

As a coincidence I stumbled across an ebulletin click through rate for a job advertising website and for a cost more than ￡3000 the viewing numbers was quoted as 15,000 with 250[ish] clicks through – equating to 0.016%.

So I had a look at our own click through rate on our ebulletins and that figure of 0.016% is actually woefully low and presents very poor value for money. Our own e-bulletin click through rate tends to average out at about 3.5% and our open rate is about 35%.

But it was the cost of the ebulletin to the client [￡3000+] which I found interesting. It then occurred to me that many pharma companies [and associated organizations] should probably revisit where and how they spend their money.

This is all pretty much common sense – but it occurred to me to wonder how often pharma looks to change the way it approaches its potential dispensing doctor customers??

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