Is Specialty Training Bringing the Expected R.O.I. ?

By Gerald E. Clor

During these times of tight budgets and limited resources all training seems to be under some sort of scrutiny. We have become used to the budgets for our new hire product training, and certainly since it is core to the success of our respective organizations, we look for efficiencies within that scope of the department. There isn't much time to become too complacent though, even as we settle comfortably with our sales and product curriculum, our marketplace is facing a new dynamic that will force another re-examination of our training function.

Budget represents but one of the factors that effect core training. With the market changing so rapidly, we are faced with the dilemma of addressing those changes as part of what we do, not as separate market nuances, as in the past.

With the onset of the Medicaid Modernization Act closing in upon our industry, all training disciplines are reviewing their options. This isn't just a managed care issue that we can address peripherally; the potential to change how we function in the market exists, and that means we may have to adjust our training to reflect that new environment.

It was easy enough in the past to let reimbursement and other issues remain on the sideline. We c have successfully addressed smaller changes with ancillary programming. Even though the number of prescriptions that are adjudicated by managed care (or 3 rd party payor's) have eclipsed 75% of our business, we were able to maintain pretty much a “cash marketplace” training orientation. We have been able to address managed care by adding some market specific programming. This was due to the “choice” factors that exist with the current managed care marketplace and we were able to maintain the “cash market” training approach without much trouble. There was no significant penalty to companies who failed to address the managed markets in their training. In fact, except for a few minor exceptions, the managed care environment has been favorably disposed towards branded pharmaceuticals – this in itself allowed us to succeed in product training and promotion as we defaulted a number of the business issues to specialty account manager responsibilities.

Having specialized managed care training for account managers that took responsibility for product access made perfect sense. Our sales professionals then could concentrate on staying on message and moving the market as if it was cash, but really is a form of “cash like” access for our products. There was no need to even address much of this with the account team leading the charge and opening the gates of product availability within health plans.

Enter the government with the Medicaid Modernization Act of 2003 (MMA). The impending enactment of this new law may provide the single most significant change in the pharmaceutical sales landscape since the HMO Act of 1973 – which, by the way, had really little effect upon the market. MMA may force us all to review how we train to this new environment. If we had been able to escape the discussions surrounding specialty training in the past due to product mix or Medicaid exposure, this new venture by the Feds will absolutely force the issue now.

There is good data that suggests that specialty training has a good chance at advancing the cause of our sales representatives. According to a Study (Health Strategies Group, Access Study Representative Survey 1999) those sales representatives that had less than three days of managed care training demonstrated an 8.7 % decline in the number of product presentations compared to those with more than three days of training. The most telling part of the Study showed that those with more training demonstrated nearly a 9% increase in their “sit down” presentations was evident. Knowing the market and the specific reimbursement environment seems to lead to more frequent and better contacts with physicians. Our new discussion around MMA is one that has to address how to deal with the new market change. Can we deal with MMA as a peripheral and separate subject? Do we now “embed” reimbursement and market training inside our regular product training?