If You Don’t Truly Believe in Your Therapy, No Physician Ever Will

How to overcome the roadblocks to increasing awareness, detection, and education

I’ll never forget when my dad’s physician told us he was going on a weekly augmentation therapy to treat his Alpha-1 antitrypsin disorder. Even though we were getting the news that he would have to have a painful, reoccurring weekly infusion that would likely make him feel sick or sluggish after each treatment, what I really remember was the enthusiasm in his physician’s message to us.

He exclaimed the name of the drug.

His excitement outweighed any pause given to the negatives. It outweighed the worry about the pain of the treatment and its side effects. It outweighed the worry over the newness of the drug that was just approved a few months prior.

He made my dad believe. He made us believe.

There wasn’t even a program around yet. It wasn’t a known therapy, but the physician was told about it, and he could finally do something about Alpha-1, so he believed in it for his patient. He believed in it for our family.

This was 1987. By the time I went back into my dad’s physician’s office when I was working as a pharmaceutical executive in 2010, he still had and was preaching the same belief in the product. Although there were three treatments on the market by this time, he stuck with his beliefs in the drug because of its direct to patient exclusive model. The services, the patient-first program dedicated to the product and program, was what he based his choice upon.

From this experience, I knew I’d always make it personal when visiting a physician’s office. When you’re sincere, the sincerity comes through and makes you, your story, your therapy, your support, memorable to the physician, nurses, and office because you know it’s important. You truly believe.

Maybe you feel like you already have this sincerity and belief in your drug. But it’s been my experience that it is likely not enough.

Along with this true, sincere belief in your product comes the assumption that you are centered on your patient population and that you know them well.

Physicians got into medicine to save lives. What they’re really looking for is the way to do that. They are bombarded with different things every day, whatever the specialty.

Let’s take pulmonary. Those physicians deal with allergy and asthma, pulmonary hypertension, emphysema, sleep disorders, critical care, and, today, frontline COVID care. Yes, they are lungs, heart, chest doctors, but they are constantly bombarded with multiple kinds of conditions. And if the physician is in hospital or group setting, then they have a high number of appointments in addition to their rounds. You can’t fault them. They are overburdened.

So, when you’re thinking about your awareness, detection, education programs as a pharmaceutical executive and how to best reach physicians, you need to start by thinking from the physician’s point of view and how easy you can make it for them.

Because of the break/fix model of health care and the time constraints physicians are often faced with they may ask themselves: Is it easy to care for the patient? Do I have something I know of that I know will work? Or is it hard and is it going to take longer?

Whether it is the nurse or physician, they are all overburdened. And if they’re introduced to a new therapy and say it’s for a rare disease, they are now faced with more of a time burden. In order to have a therapy approved, they may need to contact insurance companies, do additional lab work and then research the plans on how to get a treatment and how to get it covered.

That’s where you have an opportunity on the pharma side. You can create a message to physicians that you really have a program that can help them. And, not only do you believe in it, but if the signs and symptoms are recognized and the treatment is needed, you’ll take care of the rest.

By creating a patient-first program that also makes it easy for a physician, you’ll find more success.

Remember: While this therapy and this disease state is the world you are in and care about, the physician you’re meeting may only ever see one, two, three patients with this rare disease in their lifetime. So, it’s even more important to structure your care plan so that it, of course, works for the patient first, but so that it’s really doing what you say it’s going to do for the physician and his or her office.

Ask yourself: Are you really relieving the burdens for the patient? Are you really relieving the burden for the physician and their staff? In this day in age, it’s incredibly difficult to find the time to navigate every aspect of implementing a new therapy and care plan. Do you have care plans? Do you have suggestions on compliance? Do you have suggestions for long-term success of patient, so the physician doesn’t constantly have to manage them? Will the patient be comfortable moving forward in life? Think through all of it before you get in front of another doctor.

I challenge you: Be in it for the patient. Believe in what you’re doing and impart that to the physician. Give them your intimate knowledge of how you can help them and their patients. Create a care plan that makes the lives of physicians and patients alike easier.